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    NCDV Women: Strength in Action

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    Reading Time: 5 minutes

    International Women’s Day is an opportunity to celebrate the strength, expertise and impact of women everywhere. At NCDV, it’s a moment to recognise the extraordinary women within our own organisation. The women who work every day on our frontline to help survivors of domestic abuse access protection and safety, as well as the women who manage and hold our services and our public-facing work .

    All of this work demands compassion, resilience and professional skill. It requires women who can hold complexity, respond with care, and guide survivors through legal processes at moments of profound vulnerability. We have amazing men too, of course, more about them later in the year.

    This International Women’s Day, we focus on our women employees and interns, and we are proud to spotlight just some of the remarkable women behind the work.

     

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    NCDV Frontline Women

    Here are just some of the amazing women working in our frontline teams – the heartbeat of NCDV. Pictured are Caseworkers, Interns and an Assistant Team Leader, all helping provide an invaluable service and managing 90 – 100,000 referrals annually. Many others work in and manage our frontline teams, and we want to give them a big shout out this International Women’s Day.

     

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    NCDV Women: Strength in Action 1

    Sally Herzog
    Training & Engagement Manager

    I joined NCDV in April 2012 as a Training Manager, covering my three local Counties. In recent years this has evolved to Regional Trainer for Southern England and Engagement Manager for England and Wales. As a lived experience ambassador, I feel it’s a privilege to be able to offer victim-survivors of domestic abuse a safety mechanism, enabling space to recover and rebuild their lives abuse free. It is also a privilege to work with the whole sector, building stronger relationships to achieve better outcomes. International Women’s Day is an opportunity to honour the extraordinary women I work with every day. Women who show up, advocate, support and lead, often carrying emotional labour that is rarely acknowledged. Their commitment changes lives, and I am proud to stand alongside them.

     

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    NCDV Women: Strength in Action 2

    Julia Gatie
    Training Team Manager

    I’m proud to be working in this sector and playing my part in providing protective orders for those experiencing domestic abuse. Prior to joining NCDV in 2014 I was an outreach support worker for a domestic abuse service, working with victim-survivors alongside other agencies. My role at NCDV helps ensure organisations are kept up to date with changes in legislation and practise regarding protective orders. Alongside this, I am currently studying for a Masters in Domestic Abuse and Sexual Violence at the University of Worcester with my research focusing on the effectiveness of civil protective orders in England & Wales. For me, International Women’s Day is an amazing way to celebrate women past and present, whose ongoing strength and compassion, often through adversity, continues to move towards protecting, supporting and keeping safe those experiencing abuse, and working towards its elimination for all.

     

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    NCDV Women: Strength in Action 3

    Karen Payne
    Regional Training Manager

    I joined NCDV back in October 2015 after a career in policing. I feel hugely proud to be one of their Regional Training Managers. My role enables me to provide vital information, knowledge and assistance to many individuals and services regarding the civil intervention orders available, to provide them with a ‘tool’ in their ‘toolbox’ to support vulnerable victim-survivors of abuse. International Women’s Day is a wonderful opportunity to celebrate the achievement of ALL women. A day to be especially proud, in addition to giving a platform to provide information and education to those who may need it, those who may be at risk and/or less fortunate, as well as a day to perhaps hold those in positions of trust to account, to make positive change for ALL women, both now and in the future.

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    NCDV Women: Strength in Action 4

    Kelly Thatcher
    Head of Operations

    I joined NCDV in October 2025 as Head of Operations, with responsibility for office management, frontline and legal teams, and the organisation’s operational delivery. I bring extensive professional experience in domestic abuse, having previously worked as a police officer and within specialist domestic abuse charities. This International Women’s Day, I am proud to have worked alongside inspiring women to support and empower strong women everywhere.

     

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    NCDV Women: Strength in Action 5

    Charlotte Woodward
    Head of Training & Development

    I joined NCDV in 2023. My career is my passion, and my passion is improving responses to domestic abuse and coercive control. I’m responsible for strategic oversight of our training and engagement functions, as well as ‘thought leadership’ utilising our vast data and knowledge to contribute to the sector. Alongside, I’m a doctoral researcher at Anglia Ruskin University and a writer of feminist literature. International Women’s Day reminds me how far we’ve come which is something to celebrate, even while reminding ourselves there’s a long way to go until all global women have safety, equality and autonomy.

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    NCDV Women: Strength in Action 6

    Sharon Bryan (1966 – 2025)
    Former Head of Partnerships

    We couldn’t let International Women’s Day pass without paying tribute to the life and work of our colleague, Sharon Bryan, who we sadly lost in December. Sharon was a dynamic leader and a passionate advocate, who used her own lived experiences of abuse as a springboard to improve services for others. While we mourn her loss, we are determined to honour her legacy. The Sharon Bryan Internship Programme will continue her values by supporting our most vulnerable applicants and developing trauma-informed professionals of tomorrow.

    Thank you to our NCDV women, and Happy International Women’s Day to all our sisters around the world.

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    By Fiona Bawden, Times Online (8th May 2007)

    “Steve Connor, a student at City Law School, is a man on a mission. Six years ago he was a fairly directionless 27-year-old. Today, as well as taking the Bar Vocational Course, he is chairman of the National Centre for Domestic Violence, a ground-breaking organisation that he dragged into existence after a friend could not get legal help to protect her from an abusive partner.

    Connor’s route to the Bar has been circuitous. In 2001 he returned from a year in Australia (he says that he would not dignify describing it as a gap year), and took a job as a process server in South London. The job (“I just saw it advertised in the paper”) was not quite as dull as it sounds. On one occasion he was threatened with a machete, on another, he was nearly stabbed by a man he had arranged to meet on Clapham Common to serve with a non-molestation order: “He’d seemed really friendly on the phone…”

    The turning point in his life came when a friend, who was being abused by her partner, turned to him for support. Connor went with her to the police. She did not want to press criminal charges so the police suggested that she visit a solicitor to take out a civil injunction. “We must have seen 12 solicitors in a morning. We just went from one to the next to the next to the next. Everyone was very eager to help until we sat down to fill in the forms for the legal aid means test,” he says. The woman, who had a small child, did not qualify for public funding. But, Connor says, her financial situation as it appeared on paper did not bear any relation to her financial situation in reality. “She had a part-time job and she and her partner owned their home. Yet she didn’t have any money. Her boyfriend was very controlling and controlled all the money; he kept the chequebooks and didn’t let her have access to the bank account.”

    The injustice of the situation got under Connor’s skin. “I just couldn’t believe that there was no help available to people who did not qualify for public funds but could not afford to pay.

    I just kept feeling that this must be able to be sorted if only someone would address it.”That “someone” turned out to be him.

    In 2002, thanks entirely to Connor’s doggedness, the London Centre for Domestic Violence was formed. It started out with him and a friend, but is now a national organisation, covering 27 counties, and has helped approximately 10,000 victims last year to take out injunctions against their partners.

    NCDV now has nine full-time staff, 12 permanent volunteers and has trained over 5000 law and other students as McKenzie Friends to accompany unrepresented victims into court. We have also trained over 8000 police officers in civil remedies available regarding domestic violence. The National Centre for Domestic Violence (NCDV) has branches in London, Guildford and Manchester and is on track to have branches in 16 areas within the next two years.

    NCDV specialises exclusively in domestic violence work and could be characterised as a cross between McDonald’s and Claims Direct. The high degree of specialisation means that its processes are streamlined: clients can be seen quickly and the work is done speedily and cheaply. “Sometimes, we will have one of our trained McKenzie Friends at a court doing 10 applications in one day,” Connor says.

    Clients are not charged for the service. NCDV staff take an initial statement: clients who qualify for legal aid are referred to a local firm; those that don’t get free help from the centre itself. It runs on a shoestring, heavily reliant on volunteers and capping staff salaries at £18,000 a year.

    Steve expects to qualify as a barrister this summer and hopes that having a formal legal qualification will give the centre added clout. “We are already acknowledged as experts and consulted at a high level, so I thought it would be helpful if I could back that up by being able to say I’m a barrister,” he says. He is just about to complete a one-year full-time BVC course at the City Law School (formerly the Inns of Court Law School) and, all being well, should be called to the Bar in July. Although Connor sees his long-term future as a barrister, he says that he has no immediate plans to practise. “I want to get NCDV running on a fully national level. Then I may take a step back and have a career at the Bar.”