About 

Bez Martin

Bez Martin is a nationally recognised specialist in children's rights and rights-based participation, with over 25 years' experience across local government, national charities and the voluntary sector. A qualified youth worker, who has spent her career working at the interface between systems change and practice, helping organisations move beyond participation as a standalone activity and embed children's rights into how they lead, decide and work.

Track record

Bez spent 17 years at Leicester City Council, progressing from Participation and Engagement Manager to Service Manager for the Rights and Participation Service. She implemented a rights-based approach to participation across social care and education using the Lundy Model, strengthened how children in care's views informed decisions through the corporate parenting forum, and delivered large-scale youth democracy initiatives, including a young people's election engaging over 10,000 young people. Her workforce training film, Was Not Heard, brought her early national recognition.

She is currently Head of Participation at Anna Freud, the children's mental health charity, leading the organisation's rights-based participation strategy across research, clinical services and education. Her recent work includes supporting a London local authority to embed the Lundy Model as part of a local youth transformation pilot, and a steering group role on Synergy, a National Lottery-funded programme developing new Lundy Model training for rollout across all four UK regions.

A national reputation, built through the Lundy Model Network

Bez jointly founded and leads the Lundy Model Network, a national community of practice for participation leads, developed in partnership with Professor Laura Lundy and Queen's University Belfast. The Network has held gatherings in London, Manchester, Belfast and Edinburgh, collated over a dozen practice case studies, and now connects more than 4,000 members across the UK. It's where much of Bez's national reputation has been built, and where the questions shaping her current thinking, including how epistemic injustice plays out in youth participation are tested and developed with peers.

Her work has been recognised with several national awards, including the Children & Young People Now Professional Development and Recruitment Award and the British Youth Council's Youth Voice Star Award for Innovation. She is currently studying for a PGDip in Systems Thinking and Leadership at the University of Birmingham.

Beyond the consultancy

Alongside her consultancy work, Bez founded The Seanchaí Collective, a volunteer-led not for profit using storytelling and rights-based participation to support Irish identity and community life.

Through Bez Martin Consultancy, Bez brings together strategic insight and deep practice experience to help organisations strengthen children's rights and participation across systems, leadership and practice.