OUR BOARD

Lesley Tregear – Chair 

Lesley Tregear was Chair of the Association of YOT Managers (AYM) from 2016, actively working to improve policy development and practice for children involved with the criminal justice system, challenging national developments in youth justice that did not support the needs of children. Lesley has been actively involved in youth justice since 1992 when she became a social worker in the Warwickshire Juvenile Justice Team. She later became the operations manager in the newly formed Warwickshire Youth Offending Team and in 2009, became the Warwickshire YOT Manager. The service became one of the highest performing YOTs; reducing first time entrants, re-offending rates and custody for children in Warwickshire. In 2016 Lesley also implemented the Warwickshire Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub for children and adults. On retirement, Lesley took on the roles of AYM’s Policy and Communications Officer, and Learning Coach for Unitas. 

Chris Bath

Chris Bath is Chief Executive of the National Appropriate Adult Network (NAAN), a membership charity and infrastructure organisation working to maximise the effectiveness of appropriate adults. His work focuses on safeguarding the interests of people who are particularly vulnerable in police detention, interviews, and searches, for example people with mental ill health or learning disabilities neurodiverse people, and all children. He is a member of the Home Office’s PACE (Police and Criminal Evidence Act) Strategy Board, a Fellow of the international Access to Justice Knowledge Hub, and a co-founder of the British Society of Criminology’s Vulnerability Research Network. Chris has worked in criminal justice charities since 2005, and was previously Executive Director of Unlock, the national charity for people with convictions. He has a degree in Management Science from Warwick Business School. He is passionate about the potential for small organisations to effect systemic change.

Shadae Cazeau – Vice Chair

Shadae Cazeau is Head of Equality and Access to Justice at the Bar Standards Board, where she leads on the programme of equality and access to justice reforms, promoting equality and diversity at the Bar and access to justice, and provides executive leadership to the organisation on equality and diversity matters. She was previously Head of Policy for EQUAL, a National Independent Advisory Group who focus on improving outcomes for Black, Asian and minority ethnic groups in the criminal justice system. Shadae is a qualified Barrister with several years’ experience in providing leadership and policy advice on discrimination, advancing equality, the youth justice system and policing, including four years at the Independent Office for Police Conduct. Shadae has worked closely with service users in the criminal justice system including within her role as Director of a free legal advice clinic in Brixton, providing free advice and consultations.

Anne-Marie Day  

Dr Anne-Marie Day is a Criminology Lecturer at Keele University. She has also previously worked at the Youth Justice Board as a Senior Policy Adviser; and held various management and Senior Practitioner roles within Youth Offending Teams in Greater Manchester. She has been an associate member of the AYJ for several years during which she has engaged with various issues facing children and young people in the youth justice system; including contributing to written submissions on children in custody, and children in care. Anne-Marie has advised senior ministers and civil servants on key issues within youth justice, including preventing violent extremism, anti-social behaviour, domestic abuse, and children in care. All of Anne-Marie’s research has been focused on the voices and perspectives of the children themselves, which has formed the basis of recommendations to reform the youth justice system. 

Ian Langley

Ian Langley is a qualified Social Worker, who started his career in 1982 working in a variety of residential settings with young people until 1995. Since then he has respectively worked as a Child Protection Social Worker, Probation Officer and Youth Justice Worker/Youth Offending Team (YOT Manager), the latter in Hampshire and Wiltshire. He also led the Supporting Families Programme in Hampshire before semi-retiring in 2020. Since then Ian has supported an number of YOTs in a consultancy role and is the Independent Chair of one YOT Board. He is also a Regulation 44 Independent Visitor to two Children's Homes. Ian has also been the Chair of Trustees at his local Volunteer Centre and continues to be both a Vice President for the Centre as well as one of their volunteer drivers regularly taking people in need to health appointments.

Emmanuel Onapa

Emmanuel Onapa is a writer and journalist, who has featured in publications such as Rolling Stone UK, Metro, and Evening Standard. He has previously been nominated for the Criminal Justice Alliance Outstanding Journalism Award in 2022. Emmanuel is on a scholarship studying MA in Research Architecture, examining how architecture can engage with questions of contemporary culture, politics, media, ecology and justice and question whether spatial practice can become a form of research. He is also the Campaigns Manager for Hackney Account, a youth-led social action project. He has worked as a Communications Assistant for The 4Front Project, an organisation empowering young people and communities to fight for justice, peace and freedom. Emmanuel is interested in how Black experiences fit into larger political, social and cultural frameworks. 

Heena Mohammed

Heena Mohammed is the Head of MPS Oversight at the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, where she leads on oversight and scrutiny of workforce and professionalism of the Metropolitan Police Service. Heena recently obtained her master’s degree in Public Policy at the University of Chicago, where she was both a Fulbright Scholar and Obama Scholar. During her time stateside, Heena organised and delivered educational programming for incarcerated youth and adult populations, including creative writing, civic engagement and voter rights training at Cook County Jail and Illinois Youth Center. She also worked as a Program Manager at the Illinois Justice Project. Heena previously served as the Deputy Head of Police Powers for the Home Office. In this role, Heena was responsible for ensuring police powers, notably stop and search powers, were used fairly and equitably in the pursuit of reducing crime and violence. Prior to this role, Heena served as the Senior Private Secretary to the British Minister of State for Policing and Fire.

Vinni Kaur

Vinni Kaur is a senior finance professional, having spent nearly 20 years of her career in the banking industry. Prior to that, she worked in personal finance. She holds a Certificate in Treasury from the ACT and is designated a certified/ assessed individual by an authorised firm under the FCA’s Financial Services Register. With a keen interest in the UK justice system, she joined the Independent Monitoring Board at HMP Thameside in 2012 and was re-appointed to the board in 2014. Independent Monitoring Boards monitor the treatment received by those detained in custody to confirm it is fair, just and humane, by observing the compliance with relevant rules and standards of decency. Vinni previously volunteered with Oxfam and Amnesty International UK.

Caroline Liggins

Caroline Liggins is a Partner in the Criminal Defence team and the Head of the Youth Team at Hodge Jones and Allen Solicitors. She has extensive experience representing children from initial police station interviews through to Youth and Crown Courts, and even the Court of Appeal. Caroline has a particular interest in clients with neurodiversity. She collaborates with a wide range of professionals to ensure her clients are empowered to effectively participate in their defence and navigate the Criminal Justice System as smoothly as possible. Recognised as a leader in her field, Caroline is often invited to speak to the House of Commons in particular as part of the Justice Select Committee, where she opposed the introduction of Knife Crime Prevention Orders. She currently serves on the Youth Justice Specialist Panel, CHiRP advisory panel with MOPAC, APPG on Children in Police Custody, and Quality of Advocacy Working Group with the Ministry of Justice. Additionally, she frequently speaks at conferences on various aspects of Youth Justice. Caroline provided the impetus for the formation of the Youth Practitioner’s Association (YPA), which aims to promote and ensure proper representation for children and young people within the Criminal Justice System.

In her spare time, Caroline serves as the chair of The Westway, a valuable local charity. As Chair, one of her initiatives is to establish a Specialist Prevention Programme for children. By partnering with Surrey Police, Surrey Youth Service, schools, and other organisations, the program aims to work directly with selected young people identified as being at risk of requiring youth services. She also co-authors The Blackstone’s Magistrates’ Court Handbook.

Lucy Knell-Taylor

Lucy Knell-Taylor leads a specialist Exploitation & Missing service in a London local authority, with strategic responsibility for Prevention & Diversion, National Referral Mechanisms (NRMs) and Community Safety. A community youth worker by background, she brings over 15 years’ frontline and managerial experience across A&E settings, alternative education, prisons, youth offending and the voluntary sector. Lucy helped design London’s hospital-based youth-violence teams—now replicated in cities nationwide—and has a particular focus on the adultification of children and safeguarding responses to exploitation and missing episodes. She was an early member of Dr Carlene Firmin’s Contextual Safeguarding Implementation Group and recorded one of the first practitioner podcasts exploring place-based safeguarding and geographical mapping.

As an advisor to the Home Office, Ministry of Justice and several parliamentary groups on county lines and serious youth violence, Lucy champions systemic change while staying grounded in practice. A long-standing AYJ member, she is also a former trustee of a leading restorative-justice charity, sits on her borough’s Independent Police Advisory Board, mentors small youth organisations, and serves as an Appropriate Adult for children in police custody.

Guided by her motto—to be “gently relentless” in disrupting systemic harms—Lucy is delighted to bring her expertise and passion to the AYJ Board.

Emma Slater – Treasurer 

Emma Slater currently works as a senior policy advisor leading the UK Department for Energy Security and Net Zero’s blended finance team. In this role, she works on clean energy investment and financial mechanisms to accelerate the energy transition. She trained as a chartered accountant (ICAS) with EY’s London office, where she led the audits and due diligence of clients across the financial services, private equity, and charity sectors. She also spent time volunteering as a financial consultant and accountant for the legal aid charity UP Zambia, who support children and young people in conflict with the legal system. She remains close to two childrens charities she has worked with previously in Cambodia – the Indochina Starfish Foundation, and SPS Cambodia. Emma has a masters in climate policy and development economics and previously worked on climate and finance policy with the UK Treasury and the Rocky Mountain Institute in the US.