Julie Jaye Charles, NELFT’s lead in Co-Production & Advocacy and NHS Chair of Strategic Patient & Carer Experience, has been awarded a CBE for services to Equality, Intersectionality and People with Disabilities.

For 33 years, Julie has been deeply involved in developing Black (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.

Acting chief executive of NELFT NHS Foundation Trust, Jacqui Van Rossum, said:

"On behalf of everyone here at NELFT, I want to congratulate Julie on her CBE for services to Equality, Intersectionality and People with Disabilities. Julie has shown, through compassion and tireless dedication, just how one person can make such a huge positive difference to so many other people’s lives – she is truly an inspiration to us all."

Julie Jaye Charles CBE said:

"I'm very honoured to have received such recognition for work I have done for nearly 40 years. As a girl from Bow, the true East End of London, I'm totally blown away with the whole thing. I'm looking forward to continuing to develop sustainable community initiatives across the UK which support the development of individuals and families in need of assistance who experience inequalities. I'd like to dedicate this to my family and friends who have supported me over the years and the families and individuals I've worked with who have made my journey an enlightening one."