Nicola is the Young Foundation's Director of Local and Advisory Projects and is responsible for the Young Foundation's work with local authorities and other partner agencies on local social innovation. The team she leads has worked with over 50 local authorities, as well as Whitehall departments, community organisations and front line agencies.

Nicola has set up major programmes on Communities, Wellbeing preventative investment and London as well as innovation in local government. These bring together a variety of agencies in cross-sectoral partnerships and collaboratives. The focus is on improving the quality of life for individuals and communties by changing the way that services are delivered on the ground. The team uses a range of approaches including action research, facilitation, action learning and service design techniques.

Nicola is also responsible for growing the Young Foundation's portfolio of advisory projects across sectors. In the last year this has included work in Wiltshire on new community-based approaches for family support, in Birmingham on tackling entrenched worklessness and working with the Greater Manchester authorities and criminal justice agencies to support their Transforming Justice programme.

Nicola is also setting up Resilience, a new venture that will scale up resilience training to different groups, building on our pilot work in schools and with young people.

More about Nicola

Before joining the Young Foundation, Nicola worked at the Home Office where she was a Deputy Director of the Anti-social Behaviour Unit; part of her remit focused on young people and family support. Previously she was Director of Safe in the City, an SRB-funded action research programme set up to pilot new ways of preventing youth homelessness in London by working with young people and their families. She was also Director of Policy at Shelter where she carried out major projects on housing investment, housing benefit and changes needed to the homelessness legislation.

Recent publications (other than those published directly by the Young Foundation):

• Social Impact Bond briefing, Local Government Chronicle article, 2011
  
• Teaching Resilience in Schools, Solace article, 2010
  
• Rapid action is needed, innovation is the answer, Local Government Chronicle article, 2010
• Safe in the City: a practical guide to preventing youth homelessness, Safe in the City, 2001
• The homes we need and how to pay for them, Shelter, 2000
• Access denied: the exclusion of vulnerable people from social housing, Shelter 1998
• A good practice guide for housing associations in race equality, National Housing Federation, 1997
• Future directions for social housing, Housing Corporation, 1996

Contact

Tanya Barrett on tanya.barrett@youngfoundation.org or call 020 8709 9297.