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Judith Lockhart is Head of Service User and Community Involvement at Brent Primary Care Trust in North West London. For almost six years she has led a team of community involvement staff within the NHS, responsible for empowering and developing the capacity of local people to influence the decisions that impact on their health and well-being.

Themes of empowerment and community engagement recur throughout Judith’s working life. In her time in the NHS, she has sought to connect the racially and culturally diverse communities in Brent and Harrow to NHS staff, with a view to improving access to and community experiences of health services.

Judith spearheaded NHS support for the setting up of a community-based Cancer Black Care Service in Brent and Harrow, and is a member of its Management Board. CBC provides support primarily, though not solely, to Black and Minority Ethnic people living with cancer. She is clear that:

This is a service that was well overdue, as cancer remain an issue still shrouded in secrecy and stigma within Black communities. Whilst cancer is viewed almost totally in medical terms, Black and minority ethnic people living with cancer have a wide range of social, emotional and cultural needs that also require attention. This community-based cancer service shifts the emphasis away from the medical environment to the community where social issues around re-housing, childcare, income and other such essential aspects of their lives can be dealt with.

Judith was also a member of the Health of Londoners Task Group which undertook the first ever comprehensive study of the health of Black and Minority Ethnic Elders in London.

My parent’s generation, and increasingly my own generation, are making up a significant proportion of the older population in Britain. If they are to be content in the autumn of their lives health and social care services must be in a position to meet their cultural, spiritual and social needs.

The Report, published in 2002, provides information, strategies and recommendations for planning effective services for Black and minority ethnic older people.

Additionally, Judith was for many years Chair of the Health Authority’s Sickle Cell and Thalassaemia Liaison Committee, and is a founder member and sits on the Board of Brent Black African and Caribbean Mental Health Consortium, which was launched in October 2002 by Minister Paul Boateng, First Secretary to the Treasury and MP for Brent South.

She was born in Barbados in the Caribbean, though when her mother left for England to join the NHS in the mid-1950s, Judith and her two sisters were taken to Dominica, where she spent the next five years of her life. There she lived with her aunt and lots of cousins, and still have fond memories of growing up in Belles Village deep in the Dominican rainforest of the 1960s. Her images of Dominica remain those of vibrant, gushing rivers, bursting their banks in the hurricane season, the joviality and bustle of women, men, and children busying themselves during the banana harvesting time. And then there were the nighttime river fishing jaunts in search of crabs and lobsters for the next day’s dish of calaloo.

The empowerment theme in her working life was shaped way back in the
early 1970s when she worked for a national trade union, NALGO (now UNISON). Whilst servicing national negotiating committees at the union’s head office she gained valuable insight into the process of employer-employee negotiation, and also the importance of empowering low paid workers.

After five years at NALGO, Judith resigned and returned to full-time education, studying for a BSc in Social Science and Administration at the London School of Economics.

My time at the LSE was very well spent for not only did I graduate with quite a respectable degree, my daughter was also born whilst I was a student there. Aisha is now 22 years of age and last year graduated from Birmingham University, with an Economics degree. She is due to begin work soon, having just returned from six months in Barcelona, where she’s been studying Spanish. I must say being a mother has been one of my most enjoyable life experiences with its many challenges, great opportunities for self-awareness and creative expression.

Another one of Judith’s passions is exploring and celebrating her African and Caribbean heritage. For the past three years she has been advising on and conducting public health and health promotion training programmes with childcare and teaching staff in Ghana, West Africa.

About 8 years ago, I made a conscious decision to get to know the real Africa and move beyond the stereotypical images of war, hunger and poverty fed to us here by the Western media. Since then I’ve travelled to North, South, East and West Africa. But it’s Ghana that’s captured my soul and has provided me with the best opportunity to develop a meaningful relationship with that awesome continent.


	Empowering and influencing the black community through history, family genealogy and heritage. Supported by the Musician Ronnie Laws