Notes from the Commissioners: Jo Higson, Devon and Cornwall Refugee Support

My name is Jo Higson and I am an Equalities professional, currently working with a charity providing support for Asylum Seeker and Refugees in Plymouth.

I was trying to identify what the defining moments were for me that led me to a personal and professional path championing equality, justice and unity. Definitely my parents’ views on life had an influence. I’ve always been interested in how people live – in the past and the present – and my first career as an archaeologist was sparked by a fascination with past cultures. At University I was fortunate to meet a group of British Council students from all over the world and I was endlessly fascinated by their stories of home and how they lived. Working as an archaeologist, and then with the British Council, gave me the opportunity to travel abroad to live and work in places which challenged my assumptions and widened my view of the world.

On my return to the UK I worked in the Civil Service in policy and training for a number of years. In my first job I was also allocated the role of Equal Opportunities Officer and really enjoyed working with outside organisations to make our public offices accessible to those who were visually or hearing impaired, or had restricted mobility. I learnt that there were cultures within my home communities I had previously been unaware – the Deaf community, for example, which sees itself as a linguistic minority not a disabled one. I learnt about all sorts of difference, and was fascinated and excited by it, but also appalled by the discrimination so many people faced.

I took up the opportunities for secondments out of the civil service and worked in the voluntary sector with high calibre (and oh boy were they!) disabled students and graduates who wanted to work in the top flight of professions notorious for their low representation of employees with disabilities. I also spent five years working for a national charity supporting parents around birth and early parenthood and campaigning for women’s right to determine the choices that were right for them and their families. I would say that in this role I first became more political (with a small p) and also very angry with the injustice I saw around me.

Back in the Civil Service I worked with teams putting together new equality legislation (the gender duty) and the discrimination law review which led to the current Equality Act. I worked to set standards for Equality Impact Assessments within my department and to ensure that the benefits of such an approach were fully appreciated so that these didn’t become tick-box exercises but truly enriched the policy work.

In 2007 I moved back, with my children, to my childhood home of Plymouth and worked in the Government Office as the Equalities Lead for the South West. I loved working with like-minded people both in the statutory and voluntary agencies I was engaging with. Redundancy then gave me the opportunity to return to the voluntary sector working more closely with people from all over the world – back to my first love!

To this day, equality, justice and unity are my defining values – in both my professional and personal life. I really welcome this fantastic opportunity to work with others to try and make Plymouth a better, fairer place for all.

But in order to achieve this, we really (really!) need to know what people think about fairness across the city and what matters to you.