Teresa Williams joins the Rees Centre from the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass) in England, where she was Director of Strategy from 2018 to 2024. Cafcass is a publicly funded body which exists to ensure that children’s interests are at the centre of all decisions made about their futures by the family courts. Teresa oversaw the development and delivery two strategic plans from 2019-2023 and 2023-26 and led work with partners to strengthen the family justice system in ways that improve outcomes for children.
Before joining Cafcass, Teresa was Director of Justice and Welfare at the Nuffield Foundation where she led work to improving the use of research to improve social wellbeing across the life-course, especially for those who experience early childhood adversity. She started her career as a quantitative researcher at the National Centre for Social Research after which she spent 20 years as a Government Social Researcher, providing social science analysis on a range of policy topics including criminal, family and civil justice, welfare to work, and child maintenance. She was the Chief Social Researcher for the Ministry of Justice before leaving the civil service to join the Nuffield Foundation in 2012
Teresa has been an active member in the wider social science research and practice communities, especially in the field of children’s social care. She served on the main Social Science Panel for the 2014 Research Excellence Framework, has been an active member of the Social Research Association and was conferred a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in 2016. Teresa has also served on a number of national and international boards engaged in improving outcomes for children involved in the family justice system and children’s social care, including: the Nuffield Family Justice Observatory governing board; the Research in Practice Partnership Board; Adoption and Special Guardianship Leadership Board; and the Board of Directors for the international Association of Family and Conciliation Courts.
Teresa now plans to draw on her wealth of experience of research, policy and practice so she can build a body of research on how the stability of children’s relationships with extended family, siblings and other significant people in their lives can be enhanced to improve their wellbeing, whatever their placement type or involvement with children’s social services.