News

Bringing hope to women in crisis

6 Mar 2025

Health Trainer Helen is inspiring people working with women in the criminal justice system by sharing stories from her own lived experience. Now working for Ingeus’ justice services, the 56-year-old reflects on earlier chapters in her life where anxiety, depression and alcoholism led to a conviction for drink driving in 2022.  

Helen’s Probation Officer referred her to Ingeus’ CFO Activity Hubs programme, now known as CFO Evolution, which offers wraparound support to help people reintegrate into society. The ladies’ days she attended proved instrumental in helping Helen to get her life back on track. She says: 

“It was important for me to have a space where I could talk to women,” says Helen. “I was nervous and anxious and didn’t want to talk about my problems with men.” She took part in healthy eating sessions, breakfast clubs and arts and crafts and began to feel a sense of hope. Eager to help others in her situation, Helen joined Ingeus’ peer mentoring course – and eventually stepped up to a full-time job as a health trainer for the North-East CFO Activity Hubs. Under the new CFO Evolution contract, she is now working as a site host and community guide. 

Helen’s passion for empowering women and giving a voice to the most vulnerable led to an invitation from the Probation Service to share her experiences with over 150 people working with women in the criminal justice system at an event in Durham on 5th March. The event entitled ‘Thriving Together: Working Compassionately to Engage Women Living with Trauma and Personality Difficulties’, was attended by probation workers, prison staff and magistrates looking to enhance their skills and improve the service experience of women on probation.  

Grateful for the opportunity to share best practice at the conference and improving outcomes for distressed women, Helen says: “The aim of the conference was for the Probation Service to think about how they talk to participants, and even the body language they use,”  

“Women on probation may have anxiety and can be rude, but they are scared. They have been through horrific things, real trauma. I was terrified to go to probation; I didn’t really know what it was. When I went, my Probation Officer said, ‘we’re not here to judge you’, and that really calmed me down. It made me think that someone was going to help me.” 

Another aim of the conference was to encourage justice professionals to consider alternatives to prison due to its impact on women. “A woman who goes to prison can lose her house, her children, she can lose everything,” says Helen. “We want colleagues to consider using other services that can help women instead. 

“We want to give people hope. That’s the one thing I had at the CFO Activity Hub; I felt hope and that someone was believing in me.”