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We are looking for a skilled and proactive communications consultant to lead and coordinate the communications work across our criminal justice programme, with a particular focus on T2A.

Background

Barrow Cadbury Trust’s criminal justice programme includes a range of initiatives focused on improving outcomes for young adults and addressing systemic inequalities in the criminal justice system. A key strand of this work is the Transition to Adulthood (T2A) campaign, which promotes a distinct approach to policy and practice for young adults. Alongside T2A, the Trust also supports the Young Adult Justice Team (YAJT) project and cross-cutting work on racial and gender justice.

T2A has made significant progress over the past decade in embedding the principle that young adults have distinct needs within criminal justice policy. However, implementation in practice remains inconsistent. To address this, we are seeking a communications consultant to help amplify our messages, promote our extensive body of research and tools, and support the next phase of our work. Further details of our work can be found at www.t2a.org.uk.

About the Role

We are looking for a skilled and proactive communications consultant to lead and coordinate the communications work across our criminal justice programme, with a particular focus on T2A. This includes managing and developing our digital presence, supporting media engagement, and helping to shape and deliver strategic communications that influence policy and practice.
This role will work closely with the Head of Criminal Justice and the Head of Communications and liaise with our wider network of partners.

Over the next year, we’re focused on four key priorities:

  • Synthesising 20 years of T2A evidence into a clear, actionable vision for young adult justice, and embedding systems change across policing, prisons, probation, public affairs and public policy.
  • Embedding lived and learned experience at the heart of our work through a new T2A Alliance advisory panel and group.
  • Advancing racial and gender justice by challenging systemic bias and centring equity in all we do
  • Driving strategic communications to support the next phase of T2A and counter harmful narratives.

Key Responsibilities

Social Media and Digital Engagement

  • Develop and deliver content across a range of social media platforms (e.g. LinkedIn, Bluesky, Substack, Telegram, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat), tailored to reach criminal justice policymakers, professionals, wider public and young adult audiences.
  • Manage and grow the T2A and wider criminal justice LinkedIn presence.
  • Liaise with funded partners and stakeholders to support and disseminate their work.
  • Create engaging content including infographics, videos, and visuals.
  • Monitor and report on social media analytics monthly.
  • Build and maintain relationships with key stakeholders and influencers online.

Website and E-Comms

  • Maintain and update the T2A website and contribute to other relevant digital platforms.
  • Draft and source content for e-newsletters and alerts.
  • Monitor website analytics and provide regular performance reports.

Multimedia and Publicity

  • Draft press releases, newsletters, and other promotional materials.
  • Identify and pursue opportunities for media coverage in specialist and mainstream outlets.
  • Record and evaluate media coverage and campaign impact.
  • Support the development and delivery of podcasts and webinars.
  • Attend and support T2A and criminal justice-related events and launches.

Strategic Communications

  • Work with the team to synthesise 20 years of T2A evidence into a compelling vision for young adult justice.
  • Support the integration of lived and learned experience into communications.
  • Help challenge harmful narratives and promote racial and gender equity in criminal justice.

Audience Engagement

  • Support audience research and analysis to inform communications strategy.
  • Develop materials to increase visibility and engagement with key stakeholders.

Person Specification

Essential Skills and experience

  • Demonstrable communications skills and experience. This could include professional roles, freelance work, or self-initiated projects. We welcome applications from individuals who are self-taught or have taken non-traditional routes into communications.
  • Strong digital communications skills, including social media strategy and website content development.
  • A particular interest and experience in social media and digital comms, including updating, drafting and developing website content.
  • Experience in either the criminal justice sector or working with local or national government, policy, or mainstream media.
  • Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
  • Ability to work independently and collaboratively with a range of stakeholders.

Terms

This is a minimum 6-month consultancy role with an indicative time commitment of up to 8 days per month. We anticipate an initial budget of up to £25,000 for an initial 6-month contract, with a view to ongoing work. This equates to a day rate in the region of £300–£400, depending on experience. The consultant will be expected to attend fortnightly meetings at the Trust’s offices and participate in monthly campaign management meetings online. We also anticipate this being a medium- to long-term relationship for the right partner.

How to apply

Please send your CV and a covering email or letter (maximum 2 sides of A4) to [email protected] outlining

  • Your interest in the role
  • Relevant experience
  • Your daily rate (including VAT if applicable

Deadline for applications: 12 noon on Thursday 30 October 2025. We anticipate holding interviews on Thursday 6 November, with an immediate start from 10–12 November, including participation in a team retreat event in Oxford.

If you have any queries about this role, please contact [email protected] or [email protected]

Today, Friends, Families and Travellers (FFT) released ‘Trapped in the turnstile: Understanding the Impacts of the Criminal Justice System on Gypsy, Roma, Traveller young adults and their families’, offering first-hand insights into young Romany, Roma and Traveller people’s experiences of the criminal justice system. A summary version can be found here.

Partnering with specialist organisations Hibiscus Initiatives, York Travellers Trust, TravellerSpace, and Travelling Ahead, as part of a two-year project for the Transition to Adulthood Alliance, FFT held focus groups with young Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people in prison as well as interviewing their families.

Key findings included:

  • Lack of support throughout the custodial journey for Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people and their families.
  • Lack of accessible and culturally appropriate education, practical courses and workshops, or support for mental health needs.
  • Poor awareness and understanding of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities.

Experiences were varied, but underlying themes of hopelessness, unrelenting discrimination, and a fatalism to repeat the cycle were woven in the stories FFT heard.

The report shines a light on the prejudice which permeates every life stage for Romany, Irish Traveller, Roma and New Traveller, with respondents referencing exposure to the CJS from an early age.

Testimonies also spoke of the ‘revolving door’ where people in prison find themselves trapped in a turnstile without the necessary tools to secure stability post-release.

The report calls for:

  • Effective alternatives to remand for Gypsy, Roma and Traveller offenders.
  • Signposting and support for individuals at every stage of the criminal justice pathway, including co-produced, accessible resources for families.
  • Cultural competency training for staff including probation/parole staff across CJS.
  • Culturally appropriate education and additional practical courses for Gypsy, Roma and Traveller prisoners.

Designed to support professionals working with young Gypsy, Roma and Traveller in the CJS, the report includes key recommendations so that in the future, no one gets trapped in the turnstile.

Read the full report and a summary version.

Report author and Criminal Justice Policy Officer at Friends, Families and Travellers, Sam Worrall,  said:

“This report is the culmination of two years of focus groups and interviews with Romany, Roma and Traveller people currently experiencing the unrelenting gears of the criminal justice system.

‘Trapped in the Turnstile’ provides a crucial platform for prisoners and their families to have their experiences amplified, in the hope that those responsible will take vital steps to ensure no one is subjected to unfair and unequal treatment, regardless of their background.”

Debbie Pippard, Barrow Cadbury Trust Director of Programmes said:

“Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities are among the most marginalised in the UK, and vastly over-represented in the incarcerated population…Despite this, their voices and views are seldom heard. We warmly welcome this report, which contains a wealth of contributions from young Gypsies, Roma and Travellers.

We trust that this important report marks the start of increased understanding of their views, experiences and culture, leading to improvements in the criminal justice response and a decrease in numbers imprisoned.” 

 

MPs will this week make a fresh attempt to reform the joint enterprise legal dragnet, which has seen groups of friends and associates collectively punished for the crimes of an individual.

Spearheaded by Liverpool MP Kim Johnson, MPs have tabled an Early Day Motion, calling on the Government to make good on its pledge, while in opposition, to reform Joint Enterprise law, with a view to narrow the wide scope of the current law and to provide a fairer framework for prosecution and sentencing. As a practical first step, MPs are proposing a review by the Law Commission, with a view to it developing proposals to narrow the scope of the laws on joint enterprise and establish a fairer sentencing framework for those convicted under joint enterprise.

The call comes as the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies releases a new report, written by researcher and academic, Nisha Waller. The report – The legal dragnet – highlights how the current law on joint enterprise ‘allows and indeed encourages cases to be constructed with the absence of rigour and quality’.

Joint enterprise law – referred to in legal terms as secondary liability – allows for individuals to be convicted of crimes they did not physically carry out, if they are deemed to have encouraged or assisted the perpetrator. The approach has faced mounting criticism for the way it allows minor players and those on the periphery of crimes to be tried and convicted as if they were the perpetrator, with recent reports suggesting a rise in the number of people convicted of murder and manslaughter under joint enterprise law over the past five years.

In one case, highlighted in the report, three young men were given life sentences for murder. At the time of the offence, one was present but played no physical role in the offence, another was downstairs outside the flat where the offence took place, and the third was not even present at the scene. Meanwhile, the individual who actually committed the murder remains at large.

Speaking to the House of Commons Justice Committee in 2012, Sir Keir Starmer, who at the time was the Director of Public Prosecutions, said that joint enterprise prosecution ‘does not work well’ in the case of murder convictions, where ‘someone has played a very minor part in a very serious offence but is none the less convicted’. Some juries, he added, ‘may feel that it simply does not feel fair to convict someone for playing a very small part in a very serious offence’.

One barrister quoted in the report said: ‘We’re convicting people of murder when they play a “very small role, they’re just more than merely present’. Another said:

“the law allows them to draw so many people in they don’t have to go to pinpointing an individual, so they grab as many people even as tangentially as they can… it almost feels as though even if they lose a couple of them… they’ll get enough… that’s what it feels like… throw the net as wide as we possibly can.”

Earlier this year, the Labour MP, Kim Johnson sought a change to the law, to reduce the risk of unfair joint enterprise convictions. Her initiative ran out of parliamentary time, due to the early General Election. However, the then shadow minister for youth justice, Janet Daby MP, told the House of Commons that ‘Labour has previously said that it would look to reform joint enterprise, and that remains our ambition’. In July the Justice Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, told the House of Commons that joint enterprise was an issue of ‘real concern’ for MPs across the House.

Supporters of the current arrangements argue that joint enterprise law gives the police and prosecutors flexibility to catch and convict all those who may have been involved in a crime. However, the report argues the very vagueness of the rules, and wide scope of their application, ‘leaves the state unable to confidently asset that only those truly responsible are being convicted’. Narrowing the scope of joint enterprise law, the report argues, would ensure ‘better precision from the police and prosecutors… and allow greater confidence that juries are convicted defendants based on their contribution to the crime, rather than the prosecution’s case theory and narrative’.

Reform of joint enterprise law would also allow the justice system to focus its resources, and contribute to easing the unprecedented demands faced by the courts, prison and probation services.

Report author, Nisha Waller, said: “Joint enterprise is unjustifiably vague and wide in scope. Law reform will not eradicate institutional racism and broader issues with police and prosecution practice however, the current law encourages the overcharging of suspects and allows cases to be propelled forward based on poor quality evidence. Prosecutors are then left to fill the gaps with speculative case theories and often racialised narratives from which juries are invited to infer joint responsibility.”

Helen Mills, Head of Programmes at Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, said: “This report shows people are being convicted of the most serious crimes on the basis poor quality evidence and dubious stereotyping, particularly regarding gangs. The current ease of prosecution needs to be balanced with clearer thresholds about prosecuting multiple people for the crimes of one person. Reform of joint enterprise law is long overdue. The Law Commission review this report calls for would be a good first step to a safer law and for Labour to make good on its promise to reform joint enterprise law.”

 Gloria Morrison of JENGbA said: “This research again exposes the dangerous flaws in using joint enterprise in murder/manslaughter trials further validating JENGbA’s concerns. Neither the courts nor the CPS are able to sort out the abuse of joint enterprise resulting in thousands of wrongful convictions.

Yet again JENGbA call for an immediate suspension of its use, particularly in light of mass overcrowding and the prison and probation crisis.”

Felicity Gerry KC, a legal expert and barrister who has represented people in joint enterprise cases said: “This report reveals the persistence of injustice in cases where the law overly criminalizes and punishes individuals under ‘joint enterprise’ laws, despite their minimal or non-existent contribution to the crime, for which others are responsible.

It underscores the urgent need for legal reform, not only as a matter of legal necessity, but as a moral imperative. Reform is crucial to restore fairness, clarify accountability, and rectify the severe legitimacy crisis in the criminal justice system, particularly in the most serious of cases”

Read the report

Currently people in poverty pay a premium for goods and services such as energy, insurance and credit.  This is known as the poverty premium.  Fair by Design (FBD) has a bold ambition to remove this ‘poverty premium’ and is looking for a  Head of External Affairs to help.  Fair by Design is managed by  Barrow Cadbury Trust.

FBD is looking for a talented individual with an outstanding track record of successfully delivering impactful communications and public affairs strategies to join its team.  Using your skills and experience you will help Fair by Design to achieve its mission of eliminating the poverty premium by ensuring communications are persuasive and effective and that messages are heard by policymakers and those in power.

How to apply and more information 

Deadline for applications: 8am on Monday 19 September 2022.  

Interviews for shortlisted candidates will be held on Friday 23 September 2022 at BCT offices at The Foundry, 17 Oval Way, London SE11 5RR.

The All Party Parliamentary Group on Social Integration, which British Future is the secretariat for, has released a new report, ‘Building stronger communities in post-pandemic Britain’. 

This report details the findings from the APPG’s second inquiry into social connection during the Covid-19 crisis, which examined in detail the role that business and the voluntary sector played in improving social integration throughout the pandemic. It asks what lessons we can learn in the long term and makes a series of recommendations to government, business, and the voluntary sector to help build on the upsurge in new volunteers seen over lockdown, and to retain the increased role played by businesses in supporting their local communities.

During the pandemic year, and in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests, the Trust started to look into and reflect on the origins of our endowment. In July 2020 I posted a blog about this and about the involvement of the Cadbury company with plantations in São Tomé and Príncipe which deployed (as we then thought) indentured labour.  Read the blog.Towards the end of 2020 we found other material and set about reading what was available more deeply. In our efforts to find out more we discovered a more complex and troubling story. It is clear that our endowment, which was established by Barrow and Geraldine Southall Cadbury in 1920 and originally came from the Cadbury Brothers chocolate and cocoa business in the 19th and early 20th century, was not free from labour exploitation. Our research has found that Angolan people were enslaved on cocoa plantations in São Tomé and Príncipe at the end of the 19th century. The company was alerted to this at the latest in 1901. An account of what followed can be found in the document. What is clear to us is that this response was well intentioned but slow and that the company continued to profit from this extreme form of exploitation for around a further eight years until they organised a boycott by British and some European cocoa manufacturers.

The Board and Executive Team of the Trust recognise the extreme pain and damage done to those people, who were forcibly exploited, taken from their homelands, separated from their children, and many of whom died from their appalling conditions.

We apologise unreservedly for this historic injustice and renew our commitment to deepen our engagement with modern day racial inequality across all of our work.

Erica Cadbury, Chair

1st July 2021

Charity think tank and consultancy New Philanthropy Capital (NPC) have published new research on the State of the Sector as the crisis hit.

Dan Corry, CEO at NPC comments:

“Charities are in crisis. Beyond the immediate funding shortfall, the economic and social changes brought about by Covid-19 will create a raft of new challenges that charity leaders will have to grapple with, from big questions around governance and longer-term funding models, to how to equip themselves to continue delivering services. But the crisis also gives us great opportunities. We don’t want or need to go back to all the ways we did things in the past. How radical we are will depend upon our appetite for bold change. Our research captures our sector in the final few months of calm before the storm, offering insight into its strengths, weaknesses, challenges and risks.”

Among the key findings is an over-reliance on government contracts which could leave charities vulnerable to austerity 2.0, with the issue compounded by the fact many subsidise these contracts with income from other sources, such as public fundraising which has all but collapsed.

Charities are getting better at digital but appear overconfident in their ability to use data. There is also a disconnect between words and deeds on user-involvement, with many praising when prompted but few mentioning it independently.

Tom Collinge, Policy Manager comments:

“Our research highlights of the issues charities were struggling with before the crisis, many of which will become critical now. It paints a picture of a broad and complex sector, wrestling with its relationship with government, funding challenges, technological change and its own diversity and representativeness.

We hope that understanding the trajectory the sector has been on since 2017, funders, philanthropists and policymakers will be more able to understand what happens in the crisis and help charities adapt to the new challenges they face, so they can keep serving the people who need them more than ever.”

State of the Sector 2020 captures the views of charity leaders at moments of critical importance, so that philanthropists, funders and policy makers can best support and use the power of charity to help people most in need and strengthen our civil society more broadly. For the second half of 2020, NPC will re-orient the programme to research the key challenges the charity sector is likely to be facing over the medium term due to the Covid-19 pandemic, produce solutions, and advocate for change and support.

The work was funded by Lloyds Bank Foundation for England and Wales, PwC, Barrow Cadbury Trust, Odgers Berndtson and the NPC Supporters Circle.

https://www.thinknpc.org/resource-hub/state-of-the-sector-2020/

A commitment to prison reform was an enduring focus of Barrow and Geraldine Cadbury’s work.  As a trust, we have continued that commitment through the decades.  In our centenary year Barrow Cadbury Trust is asking some of our colleagues and partners to write blogs for us.  This is the fourth blog of 2020 (and  the first with a Covid 19 perspective).   Writing about the current situation in prisons this one is by Juliet Lyon CBE, chair  of the Independent Advisory Panel on Deaths in Custody and  former Prison Reform Trust Director. 

To celebrate the Barrow Cadbury Trust’s steadfast one hundred years of social justice, this was to be a blog about prison reform – a cause so generously supported and well understood by the Trust throughout its history. Instead it is a call to Government to save lives.

I would have covered the painstaking steps taken since the Woolf report – appropriate since the publication of this blog, 1st April, coincides with the start of the disturbances at Strangeways prison thirty years ago. I could have celebrated the tremendous drop of over 70% in child imprisonment and the corresponding reduction in youth crime in recent years. Locking up children is the surest way to grow the adult prison population of the future. I could have welcomed, and documented, a growing acknowledgement that prison should not be used as a place of safety for vulnerable people who are mentally ill or those with learning disabilities and all forms of neurodiversity.

I could have bitterly regretted the swingeing budget cuts that put paid to access to justice and legal aid; stripped the prison service of over 30% of some of its most experienced staff and served to fuel a tragic rise in violence and suicide in custody. Recorded incidents of self-harm reached a staggering 61,461 in the year to September 2019. And I could have explored what needs to be done to reform the criminal, and wider social, justice system to support victims, people who offend, families, prison staff and volunteers in our least visible, most neglected, public service.

Instead when the lives of people in custody and the staff who look after them are at risk, this blog is about survival, leadership and accountability. As Covid-19 spreads, Ministers and officials are faced with some of the most difficult decisions they have ever had to make about balance of risk and the best ways to keep people safe.

To meet its human rights obligation to take active steps to protect lives, Government must embark without further delay on, and give a clear public explanation for, a programme of planned prison releases. This should be done on a cohort by cohort, case by case basis. People who should be considered for immediate safe release include those near the end of their sentences; those serving short sentences; or held on remand, for non-violent crimes; those recalled for technical breach of licence; those who are elderly often with co-morbid health conditions; pregnant women and mothers and babies – where an important start is at last being made. For individuals approved for, but still awaiting, transfer from prison to psychiatric care (a comparatively small group but in high need and one that inevitably makes for disproportionate calls on staff time) this work should be expedited.

The priority now is to reserve prison for serious and violent offenders so that the public is not put at risk and hard-pressed prison governors and staff have the physical space and time to hold those individuals safely and securely. In the context of a global pandemic, countries worldwide from South Korea and Iran to the US and Canada, from Holland to Ireland and Northern Ireland have already released thousands of prisoners variously on a temporary, compassionate or executive basis.

Meanwhile the prison service in England and Wales has made commendable and rapid moves to improve, amongst other things, hygiene and cleanliness, communication with prisoners and phone contact with families to mitigate against further isolation and distress. Emergency use of other secure environments is being explored. Notwithstanding these important steps, in an unprecedented public health crisis it is not fair or proportionate to condemn prisoners, and staff responsible for them, to try to survive in insanitary, overcrowded institutions devoid of independent oversight.

Prison and family charities, supported by the Barrow Cadbury Trust and other charitable foundations are receiving heartfelt pleas for help. At the Independent Advisory Panel on Deaths in Custody we have just received two such requests:

‘My husband is on remand we need help. We are all very worried. Fears of loosing our loved ones with out seeing them. Prisoners are dying because of the virus, who can guarantee that my husband will be safe. Trials not happening, nobody knows when this all will happen and finish. Please help’

‘We want them home we are all alone please help us to be with our family. We are all locked down. Please help please raise this issue in the parliament’. 

People are sent to prison to lose their liberty not their lives. We look to Government Ministers to exercise moral leadership, to meet their human rights obligations and to accept full responsibility for the lives of people held in state custody.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The trustees and staff of the Barrow Cadbury Trust would like to thank Binita Mehta-Parmar for her service on our Board for more than three years.  Binita has been an active trustee with particular strengths in communications, local government, and migration and race issues, all of which have been a tremendous help to our work.

Although we are sorry to see her go, we will be staying in close touch with her as the reason for her resignation is a happy one.  Binita has been appointed to a key role at one of our partners, More In Common, and this poses too great a conflict of interest for her to continue on the Board.  On behalf of us all I congratulate Binita on this move and look forward to seeing her in her new role.  Thank you, Binita.

Erica Cadbury
Chair of Trustees

The collapse of the payday loan industry in the UK has led to more people turning to their friends and family for financial support, a new report The Lived Experience of Declined Payday Loan Applicants has revealed.

At their height in 2013 payday loan companies were lending £2.5bn billion to 1.7m consumers in the UK. These numbers fell to £1.1bn and 800,000 consumers in 2016 following the introduction of new regulations by the Financial Conduct Authority. Market leader Wonga went into administration earlier this year, Money Shop stopped issuing cash loans and other payday firms are also experiencing financial difficulties.

Now new research, based on interviews with 80 former payday loan borrowers across the country, has revealed where people who used to borrow from payday companies are getting access to cash.

The most common source of funds has proved to be ‘friends and family’ – with more than a third of those interviewed saying that after failing to access a payday loan, they instead borrowed money from someone they know.

Other actions taken by those declined credit from payday companies included cutting back spending in other areas in order to afford the item they wanted; going without the purchase they had intended to make; or seeking credit from another source. Tellingly, very few of the interviewees were aware of ethical credit alternatives, and only one person had any savings to fill back on.

The report, The Lived Experience of Declined Payday Loan Applicants, outlines a number of recommendations for action by policy makers:

  • Greater investment in developing products and the marketing of social and ethical alternatives
  • Increased regulatory activity to tackle a two-tier payday loans industry so that all lenders are adhering to the FCA rules.
  • Organisations to work together to prevent those with short term cash flow issues from suffering hardship and seeking credit
  • Government, regulators and the third sector to scope the feasibility of a UK No Interest Loans Scheme for those unable to afford credit options even from social lenders
  • Guidance on what ‘good practice’ looks like for friends and family lending
  • For payday lenders to help improve the financial health of customers and potential customers by helping them to rebuild credit scores
  • Guidelines for debt advice charities on specific courses of action for declined payday applicants