Jo Davies

Jo Davies has spent 35 years working for social justice in the community and voluntary sector, with a particular focus on children, young people, and families. She is the CEO of WILD Young Parents, the largest young parent organisation in the UK, which she leads as part of a national movement for intergenerational change for young parent families. With over two decades of charity leadership and strategic partnership roles across health and social care, her work spans safeguarding, collaborative systems change, and advocacy at national and parliamentary level. She began working with young parents 27 years ago, and has since worked alongside more than 20,000 young parent families. In this talk, she brings that experience, and the story of one young woman called Lily, to bear on a simple but urgent question: why, when we know exactly what young mothers and their babies need, do we keep refusing to give it to them?