Lucy Williams
Lucy Williams is an independent consultant and coach with 20 years' experience in national charities, leading and developing Home Learning Environment programmes that improve outcomes for young children. She is an experienced programme designer and manager with expertise across early years research, policy and practice.
Lucy is a regional lead for Families First, supporting the DfE rollout of the Dingley's Promise Early Educator Inclusion Training. She also works as a consultant for the National Literacy Trust supporting place-based systems change and continues to support local authorities through individual consultancy assignments. Lucy worked as a regional adviser for the National Centre for Family Hubs at the Local Government Association and supported local authority leads to develop their Best Start in Life Plans and implementation strategies.
Lucy has held leadership roles at Save the Children UK, the National Children's Bureau (NCB) and the National Literacy Trust. As Head of Early Years at Save the Children UK, Lucy was part of the Senior Leadership Team for the UK Impact department and managed a team of senior early years advisers supporting early years work in each of the four nations. Achievements included leading the development of the Early Years Knowledge Bank, an online resource focused on supporting babies and young children experiencing poverty and the redevelopment of Families Connect, an evidence-based parental engagement programme, now delivered by Peeple. Lucy also contributed to Save the Children UK's submission to the COVID Inquiry (Module 8), examining the impact of the pandemic on children and young people in the UK, particularly those experiencing the greatest disadvantage.
At NCB, Lucy led the national rollout of Making it REAL (Raising Early Achievement in Literacy), now a Best Start in Life evidence-based programme. She previously developed and managed the Young Children's Voices Network which supported local authorities and early years settings to improve listening practice and enable babies' and young children's perspectives to inform local decision-making.
Lucy has an art teaching background (PGCE for Artists at the IoE) and has delivered workshops for families, children and young people at Tate Modern and several museums, galleries, schools and colleges. Lucy trained in Sculpture at Chelsea College of Arts (BA Hons) and is a visual artist and an EMCC accredited professional coach (Level 5 qualification).