Women s Lives, Influencing Change

Transcription

1 Women s Lives, Influencing Change Wednesday 21st October 2015 Biographies of our speakers Angela Everson, WomenCentre Angela is the CEO of WomenCentre Ltd., one of the largest Women Centres in the UK. The Centre employs 60 staff and over 60 volunteers support the work. Angela has a nursing, children s social work and probation background ( ), and has for the last 18 years focused on holistic working with women and their children in the voluntary and community sector. Her first role in the sector, as a seconded Probation Officer, was to set up a specialist Domestic Violence Support Service in Calderdale in Over the last 18 years, the WomenCentre services have developed and the centre has run local, regional and nationally-funded services and projects. Angela s day-to-day work includes partnership working at both operational and strategic levels across Calderdale and Kirklees, and with regional and national partners. Angela has lived and worked in Calderdale since Rose Mahon, The Nelson Trust Rose is Head of Nelson Trust Women Services. Rose has been designing, delivering and developing women s services for The Nelson Trust for 15 years. Rose originally helped to establish The Nelson Trust s Women s Residential Treatment Programme before moving on to develop the ISIS Women s Centres in Gloucester in 2009 and subsequently in Swindon in Rose s aim is to continue the development of services that reflect and respond to the needs of women who experience severe and multiple disadvantage. 1

2 Diana Barran, SafeLives Diana Barran is the founder and Chief Executive of SafeLives, a national charity established in 2005 and dedicated to ending domestic abuse. Graduating from King's College, Cambridge in 1980, Diana went into the City as an investment banker, founding one of the first European hedge funds in She later moved on to become a donor adviser and head of grant development for New Philanthropy Capital, where she co-authored a guide for donors and philanthropists about the domestic violence sector called Charity Begins at home. Diana is Chair of the Henry Smith Charity and a trustee of Comic Relief. Baroness Lola Young Baroness Young has been an independent Crossbench peer since She has served on the Boards of several national cultural organisations including the South Bank Centre the Royal National Theatre, and The National Archives. She is currently a Commissioner at Historic England, and on the board of trustees of Somerset House cultural hub. She has served on a number of judging panels, including: Chairing the Orange Prize for Literature, the Caine Prize for African Literature, the Art Fund Prize and The Observer newspaper Ethical Awards. Recently appointed to the Bank of England Bank Note Advisory Committee, Lola co-chairs the All Party Parliamentary Group on Diaspora, Development and Migration and the All Party Parliamentary Group on Ethics and Sustainability in Fashion. Lola actively supports other campaigns including the criminalising of contemporary forms of enslavement, and is a member of the Select Committee on Sexual Violence in Conflict and Lord Laming's review of looked after children and the criminal justice system. She is currently at work on the second phase of the Young Review, monitoring the implementation of recommendations relating to young black and Muslim men in the criminal justice system, and chairs Agenda: the Alliance for girls and women. 2

3 Lady Edwina Grosvenor Lady Edwina Grosvenor is a highly influential prison philanthropist. Having studied Criminology and Sociology at Northumbria University and Criminal Behaviour at Edith Cowan University in Perth Western Australia, one of Edwina's many goals is to reduce the number of female offenders in the UK prison system. It was Edwina s work in Nepal s Kathmandu Central Prison which cemented her involvement with prisons here in the UK. Whilst working for The Esther Benjamin s Trust, Edwina saw innocent children being removed from prison where they were serving time alongside their parents. Edwina is a founding trustee of the award winning Clink restaurant chain which has just opened its fourth fine dining prison restaurant in Styal women s prison, which is the country s first. She sits on the advisory board for female offenders which advises the Government on the reforms of the female prison estate and focuses on pushing the idea of women s prisons becoming trauma informed. Clare Jones CBE, WomenCentre Clare has a professional background spanning 27 years, starting with social work with the local authority. She moved to the voluntary sector to work with therapeutic communities, in drugs rehabilitation and women s homelessness and domestic violence. After graduating with a degree in sociology and psychology from Bristol University, she gained experience in residential social work with teenagers, child protection, family therapy and work with disabled adults and travellers. The limitations of existing institutional environments led her to work in and develop centres for ex-offenders and former drug users. This was ground-breaking in the 1980s. The Women Centred Working initiative is a project led by Clare. Clare s role as National Lead for Women Centred Working has grown out of her experience as joint chief executive of WomenCentre Calderdale and Kirklees. Clare was awarded a CBE in 2012 for work impacting on vulnerable women at local and national level. 3

4 Catherine Mayer, Women s Equality Party Working hand-in-glove with Sandi Toksvig, Catherine Mayer founded the Women s Equality Party in She is now the President of the party. Catherine is a respected journalist and writer. She published her bestselling biography of Prince Charles, Charles: The Heart of a King (2015). She is also the author of Amortality: The Pleasures and Perils of Living Agelessly (2011). During her career as a journalist, she has worked as a staff writer for the Economist; Deputy Editor of Business Traveller and International Management magazines; and a foreign correspondent for Focus. She joined TIME magazine as Senior Editor in 2004, going on to serve as London Bureau Chief, Europe Editor and Editor at Large. Through the years, she has written for many national newspapers, including The Guardian, The Observer, The Sunday Times, The Telegraph and The Wall Street Journal. She frequently appears on television in the UK and the US. She is also on the founding committee of the Women of the World Festival and is a trustee of the medical charity, the National Migraine Centre. Beth Hughes, The Nelson Trust Beth is the manager of the residential women s services. Since arriving in post in 2014 Beth has made it her mission to ensure that trauma-informed practice and ethos underpins all the work the women s service do. Beth is passionate about working with women and believes that every women should have the opportunity and support to heal from trauma and achieve lasting change. Beth has played a crucial role in the expansion of the women s residential services who now have two residential units at The Nelson Trust. Beth s vision is for the women s services to maintain a standard of excellence and be the flagship for trauma-informed services within the UK. 4

5 Niki Gould, The Nelson Trust Niki is Manager of ISIS Women s Centre in Gloucester and has been helping to shape the varying strands of services provided there right from the start. Niki is passionate about supporting women in the criminal justice system, particularly working with women in custody and through the gate. Niki developed the Re-Unite programme in Gloucester. This scheme helps mothers reunite with their children on release from prison. Niki has recently completed her MSc in Forensic Psychology. Siobhan Beckwith, WomenCentre Project Lead, Mothers Apart Project, WomenCentre Mental Health and Wellbeing Service, Kirklees Kirsty Tate, The Nelson Trust Kirsty is an outreach worker to Sex working women in Gloucester operating out of The Nelson Trust s ISIS Centre. Working with women in a trauma-informed setting has put Kirsty in a strong position to identify the lack of interventions for sex working women in residential drug treatment. Kirsty has developed The Griffin Program supporting women to heal from the historic effects of sex working which is delivered in The Nelson Trust s residential service, and is undertaking a piece of research for The Griffins Society. Ann Marie Gallagher, WomenCentre Engagement Worker The Way Forward, Young Women s Resilience, WomenCentre Registered charity number: Registered charity number: