Dame Louise Casey - Courting controversy in the public service

Dame Louise Casey is a Visiting Professor at King's College London and a guest lecturer at the London School of Economics. She has been a driving force in the establishment of the Institute for Global Homelessness, based in Chicago. A former British government official, Dame Louise was made head of the Rough Sleepers' Unit in 1999, and went on to become director of the national Anti-Social Behaviour Unit in 2003 and then head of the Respect Task Force in 2005. In 2010, Dame Louise became the UK's first Victim's Commissioner, and in 2011 was appointed director general of the government's Troubled Families programme. In 2015, she undertook the Inspection into Child Sexual Exploitation in Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council in South Yorkshire. Also in 2015, Dame Louise was asked by then-Prime Minister David Cameron to undertake a review of community cohesion and extremism, which was published in December 2017. Prior to becoming a civil servant, she was deputy director of the homelessness charity, Shelter. Dame Louise visited Aotearoa this week to speak at the Society of Local Government Managers (SOLGM) annual summit in Queenstown.