It originates from her university days in Northern Ireland, when she became a voluntary youth worker for young people with disabilities.
On leaving university in the late 1970s, she cut her youth work teeth the hard way, in a series of challenging and often traumatic environments.
The self-confessed country girl with little previous knowledge of urban youth work was thrown in at the deep end with her first job as a detached youth worker, in which she was tasked with resolving conflict between Catholic and Protestant young people at the height of the Troubles.
Her next role was running a refuge in Coventry for young women fleeing arranged marriages, which involved looking after a young woman at the centre of a famous murder.
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