Making the Invisible Visible: Exploring the Needs of Menopausal Women in the Criminal Justice System

Wednesday, July 23rd 2025: 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM (via Teams)

Promoting Empathy & Knowledge: Co-Producing Menopause Education with Prison Officers in the Women’s Estate

Dr Danica Darley is a Research Associate at the University of Sheffield. Dani’s PhD research examined the experiences of care-experienced young people of child criminal exploitation (CCE) and was co-produced with three young people who had been in the care of the local authority and had experienced CCE. Prior to coming into academia in 2017 Dani worked with children in care and those on the fringes of the criminal justice system in Scotland and England for 15 years. She is also a lived experience criminologist having served a custodial sentence, experiencing first-hand the harms of the criminal justice system. Her research interests include care-experience, child exploitation, women in conflict with the law, relational practice, professional boundaries, lived experience criminology and co-production.
Dr Sarah Waite is a criminologist with expertise in penology and criminal justice responses to women. Her research spans staff-prisoner relationships, prison officer development, and women’s justice innovations, including current work on Women’s Problem-Solving Courts. Sarah has worked with HMPPS, Unlocked Graduates, and the Howard League for Penal Reform on research, teaching, and knowledge exchange. A Senior Fellow of the HEA and recipient of the British Society of Criminology’s National Award for Excellence in Teaching, she is passionate about creative, participatory, and person-centred research and education. Sarah is a trustee of Transform Justice and committed to bridging research, practice, and lived experience in criminal justice reform.
Beth Wilson is Locality Lead for Rethink Mental Illness, Health & Justice NE division. Beth is a qualified Psychological Wellbeing Practitioner and has been for 7 years. She has worked in management and clinically in both community IAPT and forensic settings. She has been a Senior PWP for 4 years and has recently progressed to Locality Lead within the past 6 months. This role entails clinical oversight of primary care within the North East prisons mental health teams. Her interests include working alongside partner agencies to develop services and make them more accessible to those who are in the criminal justice system whilst ensuring staff are clinically supported.
Victoria Foreman is a qualified nurse with over 20 years’ experience in an accident and emergency setting then progressed onto a nurse practitioner specialising in minor injury and minor illness working in walk-in centres, more recently within an urgent treatment centre. She has a BSc Hons in nursing, clinical skills, and prescribing qualification. Victoria has been with HMP Low Newton for over 2 years and took on a new role within healthcare as an Advanced Nurse Practitioner. Her role is predominantly taking clinical histories, examination, and diagnosis or often referral for further investigations i.e. bloods/x-rays/secondary care. She has clinics daily, and the women make appointments via pals. Victoria also sees the new women coming into prison on their first night which often requires prescribing medication and opiate substitute medication i.e. methadone. More recently while working with the women she has developed a specialist interest in menopause care, setting up clinics, checks, HRT discussions and prescribing. She is about to commence the advanced menopause course with British menopause society to have a recognised qualification within the HMP setting.