Helen is Head of Sex Offending Policy for HMPPS. She worked for many years as a qualified probation officer, with a particular interest in working with people who had been convicted of sexual offences. She also trained as an accredited programme facilitator, delivering programmes to men with convictions for sexual offences. More recently she has had policy responsibility for how prison and probation risk assess and risk manage people with sexual convictions, and for the Probation Service’s use of polygraph testing. She is also a member of the Board for the National Organisation for the Treatment of Abuse (NOTA).

In 2024, Helen completed a Masters in Criminology and Penology at Cambridge University, undertaking a small research study into the factors that support desistance in high-risk men convicted of sexual offences.