Helen Crowther Email & Phone Number

Cambridge, England, United Kingdom

(Note that I was seconded for a year into the Transformation Team - see details below - so was not in this role at that time but went back to it.) Lead on the council's equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) strategy to meet its Public Sector Equality Duty and follow best practice around EDI. Develop and run campaigns to help influence other organisations to promote EDI. The role also involves working with employers and businesses in Cambridge to make a case for them to become accredited with the Living Wage Foundation.Just completed managing a project to identify means to better coordinate the Council’s approach for engaging with businesses - working with teams and officers across the whole council engaging with businesses for strategic or operational reasons.

Cambridge, England, United Kingdom

The Our Cambridge Transformation Programme, aims to build a better, more efficient and sustainable council. The secondment was split into two parts: The first part involved leading and developing projects for the council’s work-stream on the future approach to working with partners. The leadership team and councillors have an overarching aim to work closer with partners and take a whole systems approach to tackling complex social issues. My role was to work with them and other stakeholders to identify and manage projects moving towards this ambition. The second part of the secondment involved managing the Corporate Programme Office to ensure consistency in the management of the council’s hundreds of projects. I also obtained an ‘Agile Master in Public Services’ project management certification from the Public Services Transformation Academy.Finally, in the secondment I supported a project in another work-stream to train ‘change champions’ across the council to work with their teams to identify and implement small changes to improve working practices. This enabled colleagues to have more agency in the council’s transformation process and to develop a culture of continuous improvement.

Led research and campaigns and media work for a local Citizens Advice office. Using database to gather evidence on social issues clients commonly experienced to develop reports to share with national Citizens Advice and funders. Develop recomendations advocating for changes to policy to address underlying causes of issues. Undertook radio and TV interviews for the charity. Managed a small team of volunteers.

Greater Cambridge Area

Became a fully qualified as a Citizens Advice Adviser to provide face-to-face, email and telephone advice to clients on their rights and entitlements relating to benefits, consumer issues, debt, discrimination, employment, family, housing and immigration. Ran outreach advice services, including related to homelessness prevention work and another aimed to help remove clients’ barriers to work related to long-term health issues and disabilities.

Greater Cambridge Area

Analysed client case notes to identify policy issues and to write up case studies to be used by the Research and Campaigns Coordinator.

Interned for a national research organisation that aimed to promote social inclusion in the labour market. It was a not for profit, politically independent organisation, which has since merged with the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education to become the Learning and Work Institute.The role involved monitoring policy and legislative developments relating to different groups’ social inclusion in the labour market. Also, producing communications material on this for the website, policy handbooks, and articles for the organisation’s magazine and e-newsletter.

Msc, Gender And Social Policy

Dissertation on the impact of Universal Credit on gender equality

Ba (Hons), Sociology, 2:1

A Levels, Sociology (A), Philosophy (A), And English Literature (B)

AS Levels in Media Studies and Critical Thinking

Gcses, 9 Subjects Including English And Maths, 3 A*S, 3 As, And 3 Bs