Tackling Youth Violence

Chair of the Violent Crime Prevention Board, Chair of Brent Police Independent Advisory Group, Director of Inside Out Solutions

Angela’s public sector career began over 35 years ago when she volunteered as a Prison Tutor at a young offender’s institute and also supported several community ventures to help young people work towards their aspirations through education and employment. She progressed to senior management in education and family services.

Over the years, Angela has continued to increase her academic qualifications and skills gaining many qualifications from Post Graduate Certificate in Education to a Professional Doctorate in offender learning. Other related qualifications and interests include post-graduate certificates in educational mentoring, lifelong learning, transformational mentoring and coaching, training and strategic management, leadership and supporting whole organisation approaches to change and inclusion. Angela is also a published author, public and motivational speaker.

Her areas of interest include racial inclusion, unconscious bias, the power of the ‘lived’ experience and resilience. Angela enjoys a successful coaching career where she journeys with coachees, to kick-start their careers or develop tools to enable them to gain promotion or deal with challenges faced in their professional industry – predominantly for people from BAME communities. As a public speaker in the UK and internationally, she presents profound and serious messages using a light-hearted approach to achieve impactful, positive solutions.

Among her greatest and most memorable achievements Angela sites being a mother, grandmother and partner. Also, she was awarded an MBE in 2008 for her contributions to the Prison Service and preventing offending in London and she was further honoured to be commissioned by Springer Publishers to author an academic book, ‘Now is the Time’ (Herbert 2015).

Senior Practitioner on Rescue and Response, delivered by Abianda, St Giles Trust, and Safer London

Leigh-Anne Rodriguez is Abianda’s Senior Practitioner on Rescue and Response - a service for young Londoners affected by county lines, delivered by Abianda, St Giles Trust, and Safer London. Leigh-Anne has 8 years experience of working as a youth worker with marginalised young people with complex needs and vulnerabilities. She is a specialist in working around street culture; youth and gang violence; and girls and young women affected by all forms of violence against women and girls

Abianda

Abianda is a social enterprise that works with young women aged 10-24 affected by gangs and county line activity, and delivers training to professionals working with them. All our training is co-facilitated by our Young Trainers – former service users trained to facilitate training and act as peer mentors for other young women.

Our unique model of practice addresses the barriers that stop young women seeking help. By asking young women the right questions and offering an equal, transparent relationship we help them to discover their own resilience and competence, and to develop the power to change their situation.

Clinical Specialist Occupational Therapist Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust

Damian Allain retired from the Metropolitan Police Service in December 2017 after nearly 31 years’ service. He served in a number of specialist Scotland Yard detective postings throughout his service including the Fraud Squad and as a Detective Chief Inspector leading child abuse investigation, driving change and performance significantly during the critical implementation of safeguarding children legislation and policies.

Damian’s main experience has been as a murder investigator stretching back to 1998 when he first joined the Homicide Command as a Detective Sergeant. In 2007 he was appointed as a senior investigating officer leading in excess of 30 homicide investigations over 5 years and has a particular interest in cold case investigations having solved two historic murder cases one 16 years old and the other 26 years old

Damian’s career culminated with 6 years on the Trident Gang Crime Command as Detective Superintendent leading a number of initiatives including improving operational and strategic responses to firearms intelligence and tasking nationally and internationally. He was the London lead on the National Ballistic Intelligence Service Firearms Threat Group where he was hugely influential in driving the response to the threat posed by gun trafficking to organised crime and terrorism in the UK. He was commended by the National Counter Terrorism Coordinator for this work.

In 2013 Damian was awarded a prestigious Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Research Fellowship travelling to the United States, Australia and New Zealand. Embedded with local, state and federal law enforcement agencies and community partnerships he studied gang crime, identifying best practice and learning for the UK. He was appointed as Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) in 2014. Damian graduated in 2018 with an MA in Policing and Criminal Justice at Canterbury Christ Church University. His area of specialism and research focused on decision making by senior investigating officers in homicide investigations.

Damian is an associate assessor at the UK College of Policing. He also lectures to a number of universities on a range of policing topics and recently delivered training in covert policing and leadership to judges, prosecutors, magistrates and senior police officers in North Africa. He is currently Senior Case Manager for ‘Inside Justice’ a charity that investigates miscarriages of Justice.

Director of ConnectFutures

Zubeda is a founding director of ConnectFutures. She previously worked for over 15 years in the public sector as a senior member in a wide variety of local, national and pan-European policy-orientated projects on topics such as extremism, equalities and leadership innovation. She developed an operational accredited mentoring programme on behalf of statutory agencies and partners for individuals vulnerable to violent extremism during a two-year assignment with West Midlands Police Counter Terrorism Unit, and worked for Birmingham City Council delivering aspects of the Prevent strategy from 2007.

Zubeda is a current EU RAN expert. She is the author of Education and Radicalisation Prevention: Different ways governments can support schools and teachers in P/CVE with Professor Lynn Davies (2019), “Counter-terrorism as conflict transformation (Routledge, 2014) and Formers and Families -transitional journeys and out of violent extremism in the UK (European Commission, 2015). She is a Clore Social Fellow (2014/15), an alumni of the IVLP programme (Dept of State, USA) and was invited to the White House Countering Violent Extremism (President Obama) summit in Washington in February 2015 as a result of the specialist work of ConnectFutures in developing community and schools based programmes. She graduated from the University of Manchester with a BA in Politics and Modern History and an MA in Middle Eastern Studies.

Email: [email protected]

Twitter: ZubedaCFutures

Research Fellow in Modern Slavery Perpetrators and Organised Crime, University of Nottingham

She completed an undergraduate degree in Forensic Psychology and Criminal Justice and a Masters Degree in Criminal Justice at Liverpool John Moore’s University. She has recently completed a PhD in Criminology at Edge Hill University. Her research focuses on gangs, County Lines and Child Criminal Exploitation. Grace is also involved in numerous projects across Merseyside which focus on reducing gang-involvement and the exploitation of young people, and raising awareness of the consequences of becoming involved in gangs and drug supply.