She was the deputy director of Shelter in 1992,the head of the Rough Sleepers' Unit (RSU) in 1999,a director of the national Anti-Social Behaviour Unit (ASBU) in 2003,head of the Respect Task Force in 2005 and the UK's first Victims' Commissioner in March 2010. She became director general of Troubled Families on 1 November 2011. In February 2020,Boris Johnson appointed her as an adviser to help tackle homelessness,[1][2] and she was later appointed as Chair of the Rough Sleeping Taskforce,which was set up to curb rough sleeping during the COVID-19 pandemic.[3] In July 2020 she was nominated for a crossbench peerage.
In August 2021,Casey was appointed to review the circumstances and prepare a report on the spectator invasion of Wembley Stadium,London,in July 2021 when thousands of ticket-less spectators broke through security arrangements for the final of the UEFA Euro 2020 football tournament.[4][5]
In 2024,Casey was reportedly touted by Labour Party leaderSir Keir Starmer for a ministerial role in a future government,should he win the general election.[7]
Casey began her career with the Department of Health and Social Security (DHSS),administering benefit payments for homeless people. She then worked for the St Mungo Association,a charity that helps homeless people. She became director of the Homeless Network in London,before becoming deputy director of Shelter in 1992. At Shelter she gained a reputation as an "ambitious,pragmatic worker who got results" and was largely responsible for the creation in 1998 of Shelterline,the country's first 24-hour telephone helpline for homeless people.[10]
Rough Sleepers' Unit
Following the 1997 general election,the Labour government in December that year created the Social Exclusion Unit (SEU),which had tackling rough sleeping as one of its priorities.[11] In April 1999 the RSU was created and Casey appointed by Prime Minister Tony Blair as its head,referred to in the media as the "homelessness czar". With an eventual budget of £200 million,the RSU's aim was to reduce the number of rough sleepers in England by two-thirds by April 2002.[12] The RSU published its strategy in December 1999.[13][14]
In November 1999 Casey said that the activities of some charities had the effect of keeping homeless people on the streets:"With soup runs and other kinds of charity help,well-meaning people are spending money servicing the problem on the streets and keeping it there. Even The Big Issue is perpetuating the problem." The editor of The Big Issue disagreed with her comments.[15]
In November 2000,the government launched the RSU-led "Change a Life" campaign,which encouraged people to give money to homelessness charities instead of to beggars,following research suggesting that 86 per cent of beggars used drugs. Casey said giving money to beggars was "misplaced goodwill".[16] The donations hotline set up as part of the campaign was closed in March 2002,having collected £10,000,with advertising spending of £240,000.[17] The RSU achieved its target in November 2001,several months before the deadline,but allegations were made that they had used underhand tactics;Casey responded that they were false.[18] With her work at the RSU finished,she became director of the newly created Homelessness Directorate.[19]
Anti-Social Behaviour Unit
In January 2003,Casey became head of the Anti-Social Behaviour Unit (ASBU) at the Home Office. Introduced in 1998,an Anti-Social Behaviour Order is a civil order made against a person who has been shown,on the balance of evidence,to have engaged in anti-social behaviour.[20]
Respect Task Force;crime adviser
In September 2005,Casey was appointed head of the Respect Task Force as part of Blair's "respect agenda",becoming known as the "respect czar".[21]
The Respect Action Plan,launched in January 2006,was designed to deal with anti-social behaviour and problematic young people and families.[22]
In December 2007,the task force was closed down,and Casey moved to another job concerned with community policing.[23] Her review of "Engaging Communities in Fighting Crime" was published in 2008,being based largely on her contact with the public.[24]
She recommended the requirement,introduced in December 2008,that offenders doing community work should wear fluorescent orange jackets with the words "community payback" printed on the backs.[25]
In October 2009,while working as the government's neighbourhood crime adviser,Casey said that the justice system favoured criminals,and the public wanted a justice system that was not a "criminal's justice system".[26]
Victims' Commissioner
On 30 March 2010,Casey was appointed the inaugural commissioner for victims and witnesses,[27] created under the Domestic Violence,Crime and Victims Act 2004,whose objective is to "promote the interests of victims and witnesses,encourage good practice in their treatment,and regularly review the Code of Practice for Victims which sets out the services victims can expect to receive".[28] As Victims' Commissioner,Casey said crime victims were treated poorly by the system,[29] and suggested jury trials were unnecessary for many lesser offences.[30] She held the post from May 2010 to October 2011 and was succeeded by Baroness Newlove in March 2013.[31]
Troubled Families programme
It was reported in September 2011 that Casey would work with Prime Minister David Cameron in dealing with the consequences of widespread rioting a month earlier,[32] and she resigned from the position of Victims' Commissioner on 12 October 2011.[33]
She became Director General of the Troubled Families Unit on 1 November 2011.[1] The programme intended to focus interventions on the 120,000 most dysfunctional families to break the cycle of abuse.[34] In July 2012 Casey published the Listening to Troubled Families report which featured 16 case studies following interviews with families about their situations.[35] In a half-way report released in November 2013,the government stated that 22,000 families had been "turned around".[36][37]
Casey left the programme in 2015,and an official evaluation by the National Institute for Economic and Social Research (NIESR) published in 2016 found that despite the £1 billion spent on the programme,it had failed to have any significant impact.[38] In response Casey stated:"They had not,frankly,put any of the caveats in the public domain" and that "they have misrepresented their own research".[39] NIESR disputed these statements.[40]
Rotherham investigation
Following the publication of a report by Alexis Jay on the Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal,Casey was appointed by Eric Pickles to lead the inspection of the children's services at Rotherham council. The Guardian reported on 10 September 2014:"In his written ministerial statement,Pickles says he has directed Casey to consider how the council exercised its functions on governance,children and young people,and taxi and private hire licensing.'"[41]
Casey's report was published on 4 February 2015,and found that the local authority's child sexual exploitation (CSE) team was poorly directed,suffered from excessive case loads,and did not share information.[42][43]
The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government,Eric Pickles,said the local authority was "not fit for purpose",and announced proposals to remove its control from the councillors and give it to a team of five appointed commissioners.[43] The Labour Party leader Ed Miliband said that his party had "let people down in Rotherham".[44] However,Casey's report was also heavily criticised by social work academics in Community Care in March 2015:[45]
"There are troubling aspects of the report...the process by which it was prepared,in particular the lack of rigor [sic] and transparency in the methods used to gather and analyse data...This gap [in methodology] ...should concern us as it goes to the heart of issues of accuracy."
Review of community cohesion and extremism
After the end of the Rotherham report,Casey was asked to undertake a broader review of community cohesion and extremism. The report criticised the Home Office for a lack of strategy to integrate new immigrants into communities and to respond to extremism among Muslims.[46]
The Review was finally published on 5 December 2016.[47][48] The Review stated segregation and social exclusion are at "worrying levels" and are fuelling inequality in some areas of Britain. Women in some communities are denied "even their basic rights as British residents". The report described the plight of women in some Muslim communities,who were "less likely to speak English and more likely to be kept at home". Among Casey's recommendations were that immigrants could take "an oath of integration with British values and society" and schoolchildren be taught about British values.[47]
In March 2018,while speaking on BBC Radio 4's The Westminster Hour,Casey suggested that,in order to encourage integration,the government should set a target date for "everybody in the country" to speak English. Conservative MP and former immigration minister Mark Harper welcomed the comments.[49]
Rough sleeping taskforce
In February 2020 Casey was appointed by Prime Minister Johnson to carry out a review of the government's strategy on homelessness,which aimed to end rough sleeping by 2024.[50] This work was redirected due to the COVID-19 pandemic,and she is credited with arranging temporary accommodation for close to 15,000 rough sleepers as part of the government's Everyone In initiative.[51] In May 2020 she was appointed to chair a specialist taskforce on rough sleeping,which worked with local authorities to prevent the return of rough sleeping as the lockdown lifted.[3]
In August 2020 Casey announced that she had resigned from her government advisory role,including chairing the taskforce,stating that she wished to concentrate on her responsibilities in the House of Lords following her acceptance of a crossbench peerage the previous month.[52][51]
International homeless work
Casey is the Chair of the Institute of Global Homelessness.[53] She left the civil service in 2017 to help establish the Institute,with the aim of delivering an international solution to homelessness across the world.[54]
Metropolitan Police
On 20 March 2023,Casey's report into the Metropolitan Police was released. It found the Met to be institutionally racist,sexist and homophobic.[55] One key publicised finding was that the Metropolitan Police was a "boys' club",despite having been led by Cressida Dick,a woman,from 2017 to 2022.[56] The report was criticised by Galop,an LGBT anti-violence charity,for not investigating transphobia.[57]
Media work
In January 2024 Casey examined issues affecting modern Britain in a BBC Radio 4 series Fixing Britain with Louise Casey;the five episodes covered rough sleeping,hunger,children in care,violence against women,and cohesion.[58]
Appointments
Baroness Casey has a series of appointments,including:[59]
In the United States, the number of homeless people on a given night in January 2023 was more than 650,000 according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Homelessness has increased in recent years, in large part due to an increasingly severe housing shortage and rising home prices in the United States.
Jean McConville was a woman from Belfast, Northern Ireland, who was kidnapped and murdered by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) and secretly buried in County Louth in the Republic of Ireland in 1972 after being accused by the IRA of passing information to British forces.
Brooks Phillip Victor Newmark is a former British Conservative politician, who served as a Member of Parliament and minister. He was elected as the Member of Parliament for Braintree in the 2005 general election and stood down at the 2015 general election.
Adam James Harold Holloway is a British Conservative Party politician who served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Gravesham from 2005-2024. A Government Whip from September to October 2022, and previously an Assistant Government Whip from July to September 2022, he served on the Home Affairs Select Committee and European Scrutiny Committee. He was a vocal supporter of pro-Brexit lobby group Leave Means Leave.
The 7 July 2005 London bombings, also referred to as 7/7, were a series of four co-ordinated suicide attacks carried out by Islamist terrorists that targeted commuters travelling on London's public transport during the morning rush hour.
Dame Cressida Rose Dick is a former British police officer who served as Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis from 2017 to 2022. She is both the first female and first openly lesbian officer to lead London's Metropolitan Police Service.
Crisis is the UK national charity for people experiencing homelessness. The charity offers year-round education, employment, housing and well-being services from centres in East London, Newcastle, Oxford, Edinburgh, South Wales, Croydon, Brent and Merseyside, called Crisis Skylight Centres.
The Rough Sleepers Initiative was an initiative by the Government of the United Kingdom's Rough Sleepers Unit (RSU), which resulted from a campaign by St Mungo's, a London homelessness charity, called National Sleep Out Week. It was designed to accommodate homeless people with emergency hostels.
Homelessness in Australia is a social issue concerning the number of people in Australia that are considered to be homeless. There are no internationally agreed upon definitions of homelessness, making it difficult to compare levels of homelessness across countries. A majority of people experiencing homelessness long-term in Australia are found in the large cities of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth. It is estimated that on any given night approximately 116,000 people will be homeless and many more are living in insecure housing, "one step away from being homeless". A person who does not obtain any shelter is often described as sleeping 'rough'.
In England, local authorities have duties to homeless people under Part VII of the Housing Act 1996 as amended by the Homelessness Act 2002. There are five hurdles which a homeless person must overcome in order to qualify as statutory homeless. If an applicant only meets the first three of these tests Councils still have a duty to provide interim accommodation. However an applicant must satisfy all five for a Council to have to give an applicant "reasonable preference" on the social housing register. Even if a person passes these five tests councils have the ability to use the private rented sector to end their duty to a homeless person.
Homelessness in the United Kingdom is measured and responded to in differing ways in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, but affects people living in every part of the UK's constituent countries. Most homeless people have at least a modicum of shelter but without any security of tenure. Unsheltered people, "rough sleepers", are a small minority of homeless people.
Rotherham is a town in South Yorkshire, England. It is the largest settlement in the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham. A historical market town, Rotherham is on the banks of both the Rivers Don and Rother, from the latter of which the town’s name originates.
Homelessness, also known as houselessness or being unhoused or unsheltered, is the condition of lacking stable, safe, and functional housing. The general category includes disparate situations, such as living on the streets, moving between temporary accommodation such as family or friends, living in boarding houses with no security of tenure, and people who leave their domiciles because of civil conflict and are refugees within their country.
Heather Kay Wheeler is a British Conservative Party politician, who was first elected at the 2010 general election as the member of Parliament (MP) for South Derbyshire, taking the seat from the Labour Party after 13 years. In the 2024 general election she lost the seat to the Labour party candidate, Samantha Niblett, on a swing of over 32%
Chelsea Elizabeth Manning is an American activist and whistleblower. She is a former United States Army soldier who was convicted by court-martial in July 2013 of violations of the Espionage Act and other offenses, after disclosing to WikiLeaks nearly 750,000 classified, or unclassified but sensitive, military and diplomatic documents. She was imprisoned from 2010 until 2017 when her sentence was commuted by President Barack Obama. A trans woman, Manning said in 2013 that she had a female gender identity since childhood and wanted to be known as Chelsea Manning.
Sarah Deborah Champion is a British Labour Party politician who has served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Rotherham since 2012.
The Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal consists of the organised child sexual abuse that occurred in the town of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, Northern England from the late 1980s until 2013 and the failure of local authorities to act on reports of the abuse throughout most of that period. Researcher Angie Heal, who was hired by local officials and warned them about child exploitation occurring between 2002 and 2007, has since described it as the "biggest child protection scandal in UK history", with one report estimating that 1,400 girls were abused by "grooming gangs" between 1997 and 2013. Evidence of the abuse was first noted in the early 1990s, when care home managers investigated reports that children in their care were being picked up by taxi drivers. From at least 2001, multiple reports passed names of alleged perpetrators, several from one family, to the police and Rotherham Council. The first group conviction took place in 2010, when five British-Pakistani men were convicted of sexual offences against girls aged 12–16. From January 2011 Andrew Norfolk of The Times pressed the issue, reporting in 2012 that the abuse in the town was widespread and that the police and council had known about it for over ten years.
Child sexual abuse in the United Kingdom has been reported in the country throughout its history. In about 90% of cases the abuser is a person known to the child. However, cases during the second half of the twentieth century, involving religious institutions, schools, popular entertainers, politicians, military personnel, and other officials, have been revealed and widely publicised since the beginning of the twenty-first century. Child sexual abuse rings in numerous towns and cities across the UK have also drawn considerable attention.
Naseem Shah is a British Labour Party politician who has been Member of Parliament (MP) for Bradford West since 2015. She served in the Opposition frontbench from 2018 to 2023, most recently as Shadow Minister for Crime Reduction.
Jayne Senior, MBE, is a British youth worker and manager of the Swinton Lock Activity Centre near Mexborough in South Yorkshire, England.
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