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Dez Holmes

Strategic Director of Practice and Programmes and Director of Research in Practice

Dez is the Director of Research in Practice, a not-for-profit organisation that since 1996 has been supporting those who work with children, families and adults to use evidence in their practice and leadership. When Research in Practice joined the NCB family in 2024, she joined the NCB Leadership Team as a second Strategic Director of Practice and Programmes.

Prior to this, Dez was the Programme Manager at C4EO responsible for Capacity Building. She previously worked in local government establishing and managing integrated early intervention services to families and previously managed multi-agency prevention and early intervention programmes (YISPs).

Dez has several years’ experience of training and workforce and leadership development; she is the Programme Director for the Practice Supervisor Development Programme. Her practice experience is largely within youth offending services and early help. She is particularly interested in adolescence, transitions, risk and participatory practice; Dez has led Research in Practice’s work on Adolescent / Transitional Safeguarding; she is the Programme Director for the Tackling Child Exploitation Programme and also chairs the Contextual Safeguarding UK Advisory Group.

Dez chairs the Advisory Group for The Staff College, which develops leadership capacity across local authority children’s services; and is a member of the NICE Implementation Strategy Group, and sits on a number of Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) policy committees and on several research advisory boards.  During 2021-22, Dez was a member of the Evidence Group, supporting the Review of Children’s Social Care, and is also a trustee of Family Action, a large charity providing practical, emotional and financial support to families who are experiencing poverty, disadvantage and social isolation. 

[email protected] 

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