Policy and influencing

I led on Revolving Doors’ policy and communications work during my time there, working with people with lived experience of the criminal justice system to advocate for a focus on rehabilitation, rather than punishment, for people trapped in a cycle of crisis and crime.

I regularly organised and facilitated lived experience forums, and founded Revolving Doors’ neurodiversity forum, which went on to influence the Ministry of Justice’s neurodiversity action plan and the role of Neurodiversity Support Managers in prisons. I worked with neurodivergent people who had experience of the criminal justice system to develop Revolving Doors’ policy position on neurodiversity, which you can read here.

Working with people with lived experience of the criminal justice system was integral to my work at Revolving Doors. I prepared our lived experience members to give evidence to parliamentary committees, deliver training to over 150 magistrates and write articles for the Magistrates Association’s magazine, and speak alongside Government ministers at events.

At Clinks, I led the health and criminal justice policy workstream, and ran the health and justice network of voluntary sector organisations. As well as regularly responding to Government consultations, I wrote the monthly health and justice newsletter, and organised events and trainings linked to health and justice.

I managed our work within the Health and Wellbeing Alliance, an NHS England-funded coalition of voluntary sector organisations representing the health and social care needs of different communities.

In the policy department at Macmillan, I worked on addressing health inequalities in cancer care and treatment, so that people could access high-quality diagnostic and treatment services, no matter who they were or where they came from. 

Centring people’s experiences of cancer within calls for policy change was central to the work I did, and as far as possible I integrated their reflections into articles that I wrote, on issues like universal personalised care and deprivation in the North East of England and its effect on cancer outcomes. I also contributed articles to think tanks like Reform on how the use of technology could challenge health inequalities.

At Human Rights Law Network in New Delhi (now known as Socio-Legal Information Centre), I delivered training sessions to the judiciary on issues such as child marriage and maternal mortality, assisted lawyers in writing public interest litigation petitions, and spoke at various events in states like Nagaland, Odisha, Arunachal Pradesh and Goa. You can see some more of my writing on Indian reproductive health policy here.