Social Exclusion
Speakers
Rt. Hon Hilary Armstrong MP As a Member of Parliament Hilary has served as an opposition frontbench spokesperson on Education (1988–1992). In 1994 she was appointed the Treasury Affairs Team. In 1995 she was made Opposition spokesperson on the Environment and London, with responsibility for Local Government. After Labour's 1997 general election victory, she was appointed as Minister of State at the Department of Environment, Transport and the Regions with responsibility for Local Government and Housing. As Minister for Regions she advanced the government's regional policy helping areas such as the North East of England. She also had special responsibility for Social Exclusion and oversaw the creation of the government’s Social Exclusion Unit. In 1999, Hilary was made a member of the Privy Council. Following the 2001 General Election Hilary was promoted to the Cabinet and given the cabinet position of Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury and Government Chief Whip. Only the second woman to hold the position. She was re–appointed as Government Chief Whip following the 2005 General Election. In 2006, Hilary was appointed to the post of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Minister for the Cabinet Office and Social Exclusion. In June 2007, Hilary announced her decision to step down from the Government and return to the backbenches after 18 years as a Party spokesperson and Government Minister. |
Ann Watt Ann Watt is a Deputy Director in the Social Exclusion Task Force in the Cabinet Office. Ann’s team is responsible for Performance, Innovation and Analysis, which includes developing the plans for a new cross-government Public Service Agreement on socially excluded adults. Ann’s team is also looking at reforms to public services that would help bring about better service delivery for socially excluded groups. In her previous role, Ann set up the new youth volunteering charity V, which has the ambition of involving one million more young people in volunteering within five years. Before this, Ann worked for ten years in HM Treasury where most recently she was involved in writing the Government’s ten year strategy for childcare. Before this she had experience in a wide range of areas with a focus on social policy and public service delivery. These included neighbourhood renewal, urban policy and the funding arrangements for the Good Friday Agreement reforms in Northern Ireland. |
Nick O’Shea Nick O’Shea leads the Adult facing Chronic Exclusion Programme – a cross Government initiative, led by the Cabinet Office, to test new ways of working with people who are on the margins of society. He is on secondment from the Revolving Doors Agency where he was Director of Development. Nick has worked for the Home Office, Bank of England and Social Market Foundation. He is a trustee of Liberty, volunteer for Lewisham Mencap and a Governor at a primary school in Catford, south east London. |
Sarah Hatcher Sarah joined the FSA from financial consulting firm Higham Dunnett Shaw in June 2006, initially working on FSA policy for unit linked life and pension funds. Sarah has recently returned to the FSA from a six-month secondment at HM Treasury where she worked on the Government's financial inclusion action plan, leading the work on insurance. |
Kate Green Kate Green has been Chief Executive of Child Poverty Action Group since July 2004. From July 2000, she was Director of One Parent Families, and previously she worked for the Home Office and before that for Barclays Bank. Kate is a member of the London Child Poverty Commission which reports to the Mayor of London and the Association of London Government, a member of the National Employment Panel which advises Ministers on labour market policies and programmes and the New Deals, a member of the advisory board of the Resolution Foundation which is concerned with access to financial services. Kate received an OBE in the 2005 New Year’s Honours list. |
David Sinclair David Sinclair is Head of Policy at Help the Aged. He manages the Social Inclusion and Health and Social Care policy teams, working on a wide variety of policy issues and focused on tackling disadvantage. David leads Help the Aged's work on Financial Services, Digital exclusion, technology and older people and Digital TV switchover. David is a member of a wide range of Government and voluntary sector working groups including the DCMS Digital TV Consumer Expert Group and Ministerial Steering Group; the ABI Insurance and Age task force, and the Treasury's Vulnerable Consumers Group. David joined Help the Aged from the Charity Finance Directors' Group where he worked in a policy role. He has also worked for a disability organisation and environmental organisations in policy and public affairs roles. In previous roles David has worked for an MP in the House of Commons and backbench parliamentary committees (including the Parliamentary Environment Group, the all party group on prostitution and the Parliamentary Renewable and Sustainable Energy Group). |
Roy Blatchford Roy Blatchford was Her Majesty's Inspector of Schools (HMI) in England, with lead responsibilities for school improvement and for the national inspection of good and outstanding schools. He was Principal (1999 - 2003) of Walton High & Walton Learning Centre in Milton Keynes, opened in September 1999 and described by OFSTED as 'a first class centre of learning - innovative and inspiring'. He was Founding Director (1996 - 1998) of Reading Is Fundamental, UK a non-profit organisation developing children's reading and family literacy. From 1986 - 1996 he was Headteacher of Bicester Community College, an Oxfordshire comprehensive school serving 1200+ 11 - 19 year old students. Previous appointments include publishing editor and translator (French/English), 'Time Out' theatre critic, children's book reviewer; and twelve years teaching in inner-London schools, youth and adult services. During the past twenty-five years he has worked as a trainer and key-note speaker with teachers, schools, parents and governors across many Local Authorities on reading and family literacy, the fun and fundamentals of teaching and learning, raising student achievement, primary-secondary partnership, school improvement, leadership and innovation. |
Helen Milner Helen is the Managing Director of the UK online centres - a division of Ufi. She is responsible for ensuring the success and development of the UK online centres network . Helen has over 20 years experience of working in the e-learning industry starting in 1985 in the private sector with The Times Network Systems, developing online education services for schools. She has been at Ufi, the organisation behind learndirect and UK online centres, since 1999. The majority of this time was spent leading the operation of the learndirect learning network and learndirect advice services. She also led the ippr and University of Sunderland ‘university for industry' pilot, following the publication of the ippr report and the Labour victory in May 1997. |
Stephen Dodson Stephen is currently the National Director for the DC10plus Network and an adviser to Community and Local Governments Digital Inclusion Policy Team. This is seeking to demonstrate how digital inclusion good practice is at the heart of service transformation, economic sustainability, improving people’s life chances and ensure that these issues are at the heart of policy making. Previously Stephen has worked within Government for twenty years in a variety of capacities. He has been responsible for several large scale Economic & Community Regeneration Programmes working across all sectors before becoming e-Programme Manager at Kirklees MBC. Here he saw the crucial role ICT can and should play in social and economic regeneration. In addition Stephen programme managed two of the former Office of the Deputy Prime Minister’s (ODPM’s) National Projects - Digital Interactive Television and the Mobile Text Project – both of which were innovative uses of technology in contributing to tackling the digital divide and encouraging social inclusion and are now used by over 80 local authorities. Stephen moved to Communities and Local Government as the National e-Innovations & Digital Challenge Programme Director in September 2004 and was responsible for delivering the local government e-innovations programme, consisting of 45 innovative projects, including the highly regarded MySociety, Slivers of Time, and Significant projects. Stephen has also been actively involved as an adviser to cross-government and departmental policy on innovation and social inclusion, including the Social Exclusion Unit’s “Inclusion through Innovation” and the Audit Commissions review of innovation in Local Government, “Seeing the light”. In addition Stephen led on the successful Number 10 cross government and industry Digital Challenge initiative as part of the UK digital strategy. |
George Hosking WAVE Trust (Worldwide Alternatives to ViolencE) is a charity dedicated to identifying and promoting the most effective methods known, worldwide, to address violence. WAVE has conducted a 9-year study of the root causes of violence. WAVE was founded by George Hosking, who is a Quaker. He uses the same approach to this work as he did throughout his career as an international business strategist: changing performance through identifying and understanding root causes, rather than operating on symptoms. This enabled his consultancy to transform profitability for well-known international companies, adding over £30 million p.a. to their business profitability. Already an economist and accountant, in mid career George trained as a psychologist and Clinical Criminologist, doing therapeutic work with violent criminals both in prison and after release. To date none of his clients have re-offended with violence, in or out of prison. George puts this unusual success down to the approach of tackling root causes. WAVE currently advises the UK Home Office, Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit, Metropolitan Police, Centre for Social Justice and Scottish Violence Reduction Unit on violence reduction. In 2006 WAVE’s groundbreaking work was commended by the World Health Organisation and the charity became part of WHO’s global Violence Prevention Alliance. |
John Rhodes John Rhodes heads up Citizens Advice’s initiative to get all 400+ bureaux involved in Financial Capability education by 2011. Nearly 200 already are; over double last year’s total. Most are working closely with a range of local partners. |
Guy Giles Guy Giles is the Operations Manager for DigiTV – Looking Local. Looking Local is a portal on digital interactive TV and mobile phones, allowing access to local government information and services. Looking Local is available nationwide and is free to use on DiTV. With the digital switchover coming, this is a growing channel that should not be dismissed - already over 55% of homes can interact via their TV. With c. 90% of adults having a mobile phone, along with the costs of using data services on mobile phones dropping significantly, the reach and accessibility of the Looking Local service is significant. Guy has been involved in the development of the DigiTV technology from the outset and is responsible for its delivery and rollout. As the ‘face’ of DigiTV, Guy is well known in digital inclusion circles and ensures that DigiTV’s profile is on all relevant government, third sector and related service providers radars. Over 80 local authorities now publish services on Looking Local and every single one of them has a business case to do so. National partnerships include Jobcentre Plus, Transport Direct and Community Legal Services Commission. Looking Local offers a path into services for those people without PC skills or Internet access. With nearly 14 years of management consultancy and software development experience in the public and private sector, Guy has a passion for delivering public services on emerging channels. These new channels are set to witness fundamental changes to the way citizens interact with government and the wider public sector over the next five years. In whatever spare time he has, he enjoys playing squash, music and the challenges of fatherhood! |
| Fran Harrison Frances is manager of Fairbridge West, part of a national charity that offers excluded and disaffected young people a long term personal development programme. She has previously worked in areas of consumer and financial policy and advice provision at the National Consumer Council, National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux and local authority regulatory services. |
Peter Holbrook
He established ‘project sunlight’ as project manager 8 years ago and has developed the project, since inception, to become one of the Country’s most successful and high profile ‘community anchors’ and one of the regions most rapidly developing and diverse social enterprises. The Sunlight Centre is the base for the trust and connects a wide variety of community services under one roof. It aims to increase individual and community well-being through the range of services and user led activities. Independent evaluation has provided strong evidence of impact. The Centre includes a local Primary Health Practice with six GPs, a pharmacy, a family centre and base for children’s services, nursery groups, office space for six charities, a number of community meeting rooms, a community hall and a number of enterprises including cafesunlight, sunlight recording studios, parentis and radio sunlight. The same building is also home to over 90 resident organisations and complementary health practitioners. Sunlight enterprises cic provide delicious, healthy, ethical food through a network of 5 community cafes in Medway. The cafes have a combined turnover of over £1m per year. Café Sunlight operates in Gillingham, Rochester, Chatham and Rainham and is the sole provider of catering services at Medway Council’s HQ - Gun Wharf. The café network trains and facilitates the learning of more than 50 people each year. most of the trainees are from socially excluded, ex-offending or other marginalised communities. 87% of all the trusts running costs are funded by social enterprise; the recording studio is industry standard and professional musicians fees support wide public access to young and old alike. Radio Sunlight now hosts 40 live shows each week, these deliver a diverse range of programmes and provides individuals and communities with a voice, training and skills. Parentis was initiated as a strategy to better support young people by encouraging better parenting in Medway; courses and 1:1 support are delivered throughout Medway and over 1000 families and hence countless young people have benefited from its delivery. The trust will shortly launch Sunlight Community Health CIC which will begin delivering primary care through a social enterprise model. The Sunlight trust and Sunlight enterprises operate with a team of 50 staff supported by 108 volunteers. 80% of staff have started out as service users, gone onto become volunteers and have progressed on to paid positions. 25% are ex-offenders. Peter was appointed as a Social Enterprise Ambassador in 2007 – a scheme supported by the Cabinet Office and coordinated by the Social Enterprise Coalition. In this role he will be an advocate for social enterprise for 3 years. The Sunlight Trust has received the following national recognition: |
Oliver Batchelor Ollie is currently Director of Non Residential Services for Tyneside Cyrenians, a regional charity which works with homeless and socially excluded individuals in a diverse range of projects. These include day and night outreach, day centre based work, targeted work with sex workers and refugees as well as a number of initiatives providing skills training and employment. Ollie is a social worker by training and has worked predominantly in the field of substance misuse for more than thirty years in London, Edinburgh and North-East England in statutory, voluntary and private sectors. He has also taught and written widely on the subject. |
David Morris David Morris is Programme Director of the National Social Inclusion Programme (NSIP) at the National Institute for Mental Health in England, leading implementation across government of the report of the Social Exclusion Unit on mental health (2004) and key aspects of the Social Exclusion Action Plan published by the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit in 2006. David is also Professor of Mental Health, Inclusion and Community at the University of Central Lancashire and Director of ‘Include’, an international programme on social inclusion from a community perspective. His doctoral research at Manchester University was on social inclusion and community engagement in the context of primary care. Formerly David was Senior Policy Advisor at the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health and Director of the national ‘Citizenship and Community Mental Health Programme’, one of four research or policy programmes in this area which he has designed and led. Prior to this he was Head of Mental Health at South Thames Regional Health Authority and subsequently, the NHS Executive South East Region. His professional background and qualifications are in social work and the management of mental health services in social care. |