What I did

As the first service designer fully embedded in a policy team at the Ministry of Justice, I worked at the intersection of design, research, and policy to make the Criminal Justice System visible enough to act on.

Over two years, I co-led the synthesis of qualitative and quantitative research to map the resettlement system in its entirety. The centrepiece of this was a systems map, the first time the organisation had a visual representation of the full complexity of resettlement, showing the structural dynamics, dependencies, and unintended consequences that sit beneath the day-to-day patterns policy tends to focus on.

That map became the foundation for the 2030 Resettlement Vision, shifting the conversation from isolated interventions to system-level choices. The outputs were used by Civil Service Directors to brief incoming Ministers, and the systemic design approach was recognised with the Service Design Network Global Award 2023.

Alongside the vision, I developed a proposed operating model to change how the organisation approaches complex problems like resettlement. Despite genuine appetite from senior leaders, organisational constraints meant it didn't move forward (a reminder that making the case for systems change is rarely straightforward, even when the insight is there!).