Remembering Debbie
It is with great sadness that we share the news that our beloved colleague Debbie Willis lost her brave battle with cancer in the early hours of Sunday morning.
Debbie joined Hampton Trust in 2006 as the Children and Young People’s Manager. With a background in youth work, she was fearless in her approach and led interventions working with young offenders who had grown up in domestic abuse. She designed and delivered a group work programme called LINX, which reached up to 1,000 young offenders across Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, Gloucester and Devon. She trained professionals to deliver it alongside Hampton Trust practitioners, and presented to judges and magistrates for whom it was used as a sentencing requirement in court.
She also led an award-winning project for young dads with Southampton Family Nursing Partnership, which was published in a national journal and delivered at a national conference. This was followed by LINX Gateway, a group work programme for young adults given a conditional caution across a range of crime types.
Deb was always passionate about supporting vulnerable women. Full of creative ideas for engaging women who were reluctant to attend group sessions, she was instrumental in shaping what became JUNO, working directly with the women themselves to choose the name for the intervention. That instinct to involve and empower the people she worked with was pure Deb.
Deb adored Hampton Trust. She was passionate about changing lives and seized every opportunity to do so. When she was diagnosed with aggressive stage 4 breast cancer in 2022, and again when it returned in 2024, her commitment to Hampton Trust never wavered – in fact, it kept her going. As soon as she was given the all-clear following her first treatment, she was straight back delivering the women’s groups. Throughout everything, she continued to ask what we were doing next and how we could improve things.
Last October, at a celebration in her honour, three young women came who had been on her LINX programme at the age of 13, facing exclusion from school. They spoke about how she had changed their lives, but they are just a few among the thousands she touched over a career that began as a detached youth worker in Berkshire.
As Hampton Trust has grown, there will be many in the wider sector who never had the chance to meet Deb. But those of us who had the privilege of working with her will always speak of her, and we encourage everyone to do the same, including the infuriating brilliance of her practical jokes. We will look at ways to keep Debbie’s legacy alive and to recognise the extraordinary contribution she made. We will also consider a donation to a cause close to her heart, and will share further details in due course.
Photo: Debbie (middle) with Evan Starke (left) and Tracy Kent at the Domestic Abuse Forum in Surrey in 2017.
