Kirsteen Tait advises the Paul Hamlyn Foundation on its Supported Options Fund for young undocumented migrants which she helped to set up under their Social Welfare programme.

She is currently a trustee (formerly chair) of Most Mira (Bridge of Peace) a charity which provides arts based opportunities jointly for Serb and Bosnian young people in post conflict Prijedor in NW Bosnia, and of Men for Tomorrow (previously Hera Trust) a charity which grew out of research into the role of grandparents and the attitudes of women originally undertaken under the umbrella of the Institute of Community Studies.

In recent years she has worked on refugee and asylum issues setting up the Information Centre about Asylum and Refugees (ICAR) at Kings College London in 2000, and being employed as a consultant on a number of refugee projects; and on social welfare projects with Michael Young including Open School, the National Association for the Education of Sick Children, of which she was founder director, and the School of Social Entrepreneurs.

She entered the administrative grade of the civil service from university, and worked as an educational, historical and market researcher during the years in which she lived abroad as the wife of a diplomat.