Julie Jaye Charles, NELFT’s Board Advisor and Lead in Co-Production & Advocacy, has been awarded a CBE for services to Equality, Intersectionality and People with Disabilities.

For over 33 years, Julie has been deeply involved in developing Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) community driven strategies directly on improving the well-being, representation and social inclusion of those communities. Over the past 25 years, along with a team of dedicated individuals and supportive organisations, her energies have been focused on developing firm sustainable, local, national and international BME Disabled People and Carer driven agencies.

Julie, founded and led the Equalities National Council whose main purpose was to empower, support, and assist disabled people and carers from BME communities. She also co-authored with Scope: ‘Overlooked Communities, Over-due Change’, which was later accepted and recommended by the Parliament and the House of Lords. The report is online and in the Parliamentary Hansard Library.

A well-seasoned international speaker and a human rights advocate, Julie has been advising a number of Ministers on policy development and implementation regarding health, social care, and mental health issues and their effects on BME communities.

Julie Jaye Charles CBE said:

"I feel honored to have received this prestigious recognition for the work I have done. I look back and wonder where the years have gone as my first venture was at the age of 17 when I developed a nursery on an estate in Leyton East London. The nursery is called the Nappy Gang and is now part of the Leyton Orient regeneration mapping. I have worked for ministers since 1997, my first being Frank Dobson who was then the Secretary of State for Health. We formed a collaborative called the partners council and to cut a long story short it is now called NICE the National Institute for Clinical Excellence as we know it today. I have really enjoyed my journey that has brought me to where I am today. There have been challenging times as there would be for someone like me who has lived experience of rapid cycling bipolar, lupus and spinal stenosis. However I have taken the bull by the horns and ridden the storm so to speak, not bad for a girl from Bow. I feel humbled as a new part of my journey begins."

We would like to take this opportunity to congratulate Julie on this incredible achievement, from everyone at NELFT.