In the first Radical Reformers episode of 2025, I welcome Naomi Hulston, Chief Executive of Catch 22, a national charity delivering employment, education, justice, health, and social care services.

Naomi shares her journey to becoming the Chief Executive of Catch 22. Her story is a powerful reminder that success often comes from doing what you love and making a positive impact on the community. Naomi describes how Catch 22, despite being a large, national organisation, remains properly connected to communities to understand the full context of a person’s life. She also discusses the evolving relationship between employers and employees and asks if we have lost some connection and accountability post covid.

Naomi's practical approach and unwavering optimism are a breath of fresh air. This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in public service innovation and community development.

Enjoy it!

Radical Reformers is live! Join me as we dive into an insightful conversation live from the Reform Think Tank’s "Reimagining the Local State" conference in Sheffield.

In this episode, a range of guests explore the changing relationship between central and local government, the importance of collaboration among different local partners to tackle complex societal problems and the momentum behind devolution. They also discuss the role of mayors, the impact of structural changes versus policy changes, and the concept of Radical Place Leadership.

Thanks to our live guests:

- Angie Ridgewell, Chief Executive Officer at Hertfordshire County Council

- Charlie Pickles, Director, Reform Think Tank

- Paul Morrison, Chief Executive, The Planning Inspectorate

- Simon Kaye, Director of Policy, Reform Think Tank

Don't miss out on this engaging discussion that spotlights innovative policy conversations and the future of local government.

Radical Reformers returns! In this latest episode, I talk to Emmanuel Akpan Inwang, Founder and Director of Lighthouse Pedagogy Trust.

Emmanuel's career journey is truly inspiring. He began as a teacher in Birmingham where he witnessed first-hand the challenges faced by looked-after children. This experience ignited a passion for improving the lives of those children and ultimately to the establishment of the Lighthouse Pedagogy Trust.

The Lighthouse Pedagogy Trust is dedicated to providing exceptional residential care experiences for looked-after children. Emmanuel's journey to founding this organisation included extensive research and a transformative trip to Europe, where he visited children's homes in Germany and Denmark. He observed the positive outcomes of social pedagogy practices in these countries and was inspired to implement similar approaches in the UK.

I love that The Trust focuses on creating stable, nurturing environments that are close to home and prioritise long-term relationships and holistic care for children.

it's an inspiring listen and very relevant given the Government's focus on improving children's care homes in England.

In this episode of Radical Reformers, I speak to Martin P Griffiths, CBE, Trauma Surgeon at Barts Health NHS Trust and Clinical Director of Violence Reduction at NHS London and Chair of the Board of Trustees at SHiFT UK.

This episode is different from previous episodes. It is about gun and knife violence, its impact and why we all need to pay attention.

As well as having to operate (often repeatedly) on young people involved in gun and knife violence, Martin spends a lot of his time and effort reaching out to communities where children may be at risk. He is an advocate of showing young people ‘green lights’ and a positive alternative rather than just ‘red lights’.

We also delve into what real collaboration in public services means and how there is often a need to “unlearn” and to undertake “cultural healing” to get out of a siloed mentality.

One of my favourite parts of the conversation is where Martin talks about the importance of having conversations and the power of an additional voice… a simple but often neglected practice.

NB – parts of this conversation are quite hard hitting, especially for those who may be affected by the themes being discussed.

In this episode of Radical Reformers, I am joined by Theresa Leavy, former Executive Director for Children (DCS) at Dorset Council and Interim Director of Children’s services at Cheshire East Council.

In this wonderfully honest and open discussion, Theresa takes us through her career from an 18 year old in charge of a group of kids in residential care, all the way through to leading Dorset's improvement journey over the last four years.

It's a leadership master class where Theresa talks about the importance of connecting as a person with your work, the importance of delivering high support and high challenge as well as the true meaning of being kind.

My favourite bit of the whole conversation is how leaders need to show vulnerability. I think this is something which is really lacking.

Enjoy it!

In this latest episode of Radical Reformers, I am joined by Lucy Butler, Director of South East Regional Care Cooperative.

Lucy shares how her early life experience led her to a career in public services, starting in adult social care and ultimately to various leadership positions in children's services.

Most recently, Lucy was Director of Children’s Services at West Sussex. She discusses their improvement journey and the importance of ensuring a good culture filters all the way through an organisation and the key role persistence and consistency play in driving improvement.

My favourite part of this episode is where Lucy shares the turning point in her career when she helped fight against child sexual exploitation (CSE) in Oxfordshire. She highlights the creative thinking that led everyone from hoteliers to taxi drivers to become part of tackling CSE during her time at Oxfordshire County Council.

It’s an inspiring listen. Enjoy it!

This episode is with Mark Sims, the Chief Executive of the P3 Group. He describes P3 as an organisation that supports people who are having a "tough time" and he doesn't like putting labels on people. This really gives you an idea of the sort of leader Mark is and the sort of organisation P3 is.

P3 are particularly active in supporting people who don't have a place to live and Mark sets out housing situation we find ourselves in and what some of the drivers are. For P3's work to be successful, Mark's team need to be able to collaborate with other service providers within the public sector or other third sector and private organisations - so he talks about how his team are empowered to work across organisational boundaries and to collaborate.

The ambition of P3 is to find people somewhere to live, someone to love and something to do. Mark explains how when they're reviewing how successful they are as an organisation, it's not looking at growth metrics, it's not looking at numbers of contracts, numbers of staff. They ask themselves, are we living, are we loving, are we doing? And I think that's really powerful. For many organisations, taking that approach rather than just looking at the metrics would give them a much better idea of how successful they are.

For any of you who know Mark, you'll know this will be a brilliant conversation and it really is. I enjoyed it and I learned a lot from it.

This episode is with Simon Beeton, the Chief Executive of Navigo Health and Social Care CIC, a mental health and wellbeing provider in Northeast Lincolnshire. Navigo have been named in the Sunday Times top 100 not-for-profit organisations to work five years in a row! So there will be lessons to learn for everyone.

 

Simon has been on quite a journey. We talk about his transition from long standing Finance Director to Chief Executive and the challenges of moving to this broader, more strategic role.

 

We discuss Navigo's impressive entrepreneurial activity, such as their purchase and running of a garden centre and restaurant. Public service entrepreneurialism is important in terms of giving individuals the space to be creative and also being entrepreneurial at an organisational level. Simon provides some good examples of how Navigo is creating the space to beg forgiveness rather than ask permission…

The main section of the conversation is around £radical" place leadership and place working. Simon and I talk about how the local organisations in Northeast Lincolnshire want to work more effectively together, and how it's so important (in the words of NE Lincs Council Chief Executive, Rob Walsh) to put place above organisation.

The Mutual Ventures team are lucky to be doing some innovative work with Northeast Lincolnshire on developing a more Radical Place Leadership approach and we talk about that and what the ultimate goals are.

This episode is all about the changing role of the council Chief Executive - and it certainly is changing!

The financial pressures on councils are more intense than they have ever been. The responsibility that sits on a council Chief Executive to act as a place leader, engaging with the health and care system through the Integrated Care System arrangements, and also engaging with a Mayoral Combined Authority for Councils that have that arrangement in place. So, the modern council Chief Executive role is one which requires a broad range of skills and capabilities, but also huge reserves of personal resilience as the role becomes ever more public facing and scrutinised.

So, the question has to be asked, who on earth would want to do this very difficult job? There isn’t a huge pipeline of people in the system ready to step up.

To answer all of these questions and more, I'm delighted that the guests on this episode are Professor Donna Hall, Mutual Ventures Non-Executive Director and former Chief executive of Wigan Council and Stephen Young, current Chief Executive of Halton Council.

This episode is a bit special. It's the first time we have had two guests on at the same time. They are Charlie Pickles from the Reform Think Tank and Jack Shaw from Labour Together. You might recognise those names. Both Charlie and Jack have been on the podcast in their own right and had their own episode.

Given that we've just had an election with a change of government, we wanted to get these two policy experts back in to talk about what a Labour government might mean in terms of public service reform. We cover a wide range of topics including the new central government missions and how they will be delivered, what the new government might mean for devolution and the relationship between central government. One thing is for sure – a lot more collaboration will be needed between public services at all levels.

Both Charlie and Jack are so insightful and enthusiastic about genuine public service reform, which is what we hope you are all here to listen to!