Rebel Justice
What is justice? Who does it serve? Why should you care?
When we think about justice, we think about it as an abstract, something that happens to someone else, somewhere else. But justice and the law regulate every aspect of our interactions with each other, with organisations, and with the government.
We never think about it until it impacts our lives, or that of someone close.
Our guests are women with lived experience of the justice system whether as victims or women who have committed crimes; or people at the forefront of civic action who put their lives on the line to demand a better world..
We ask them to share their insight into how we might repair a broken and harmful system, with humanity and dignity.
We also speak with people who are in the heart of the justice system creating important change; climate activists, judges, barristers, human rights campaigners, mental health advocates, artists and healers.
Rebel Justice
Quaker Social Action
What if the most practical path to justice starts with listening harder than we speak? We sit down with Judith Moran, director of Quaker Social Action, to trace a journey from Victorian philanthropy to community-led solutions that protect dignity in the face of poverty, grief, and homelessness. Grounded in a clear definition of poverty as a lack of resources to meet minimum needs—including social participation—Judith shows how co-creation leads to services that work in the real world.
We unpack how QSA uses unrestricted funding to test ideas and build what’s missing. Down to Earth grew from a single story of bereavement and debt into the UK’s leading support for funeral poverty, guiding families through affordable, meaningful choices while driving sector-wide change. That frontline credibility powered the Fair Funerals campaign, cross-party support in Parliament, and a Competition and Markets Authority investigation that set the stage for tighter industry regulation and improvements to funeral expenses payments. Alongside policy wins, we explore Turn a Corner, a mobile library for people experiencing homelessness that restores agency and human connection through books, learning, and conversation.
Judith’s leadership lens—think it possible you may be mistaken—runs through everything: building blame-free culture, choosing consensus over ego, and treating integrity as a daily practice. We talk honestly about the cost of living crisis, the lingering shock of the pandemic, and a growing poverty of hope. We look at equity, diversity, and inclusion as unlearning and learning rather than a checklist, and we name the sector’s hardest questions: how to fund responsibly, who should lead, and when to collaborate or step aside. If you care about social justice, nonprofit innovation, bereavement support, homelessness, and policy change rooted in lived experience, this conversation offers a practical roadmap and a dose of courage.
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Credits
Produced by Henry Chukwunyerenwa
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You're listening to Rebel Justice, the podcast from The View magazine. On this podcast, we center women with lived experience of the justice system, women who have survived it, been incarcerated by it, or are working to transform it from within and beyond. We also speak with judges, lawyers, campaigners, artists, and healers navigating the system every day. Together, we ask how justice might be reimagined with dignity and humanity at its core.
Charlotte:Thank you for joining us today. Would you start by telling us a little bit about yourself, your background? Obviously, you've had a long and varied career in the non-profit sector, so ,
Judith:Yes, of course I can. So I'm Judith Moran and I am director of Quaker Social Action, and I've spent my whole career in the voluntary sector and have done a lot of volunteering on top of that as well. In a Pit village that closed the year I was born, though I take no responsibility for that. And I grew up in a family that had always done manual jobs, did for their whole careers, very financially precarious. There was quite a lot of difficulty in that household. My mum was very mentally unwell, and I stepped up and was a young carer at an early age, and I think it shaped my understanding of the world and how it worked. It shaped my personality, I'm sure, and I think led me to the clear choices that I came to today.
Charlotte:For listeners who might not be familiar with Quaker Social Action, could you start by telling them a little bit about what you do and how it began?
Judith:Absolutely. So Quaker Social Action has a very long history. We were founded in 1867 by Quakers who came into the East End of London and looked at the slums and the deprivation and thought this is not okay, this is not good enough. And because of their faith, it compelled them into action. So they sought to do really practical, helpful things in the communities of East London, and we are the modern-day incarnation of that. So our heart and our heritage are still in East London. Lots of the things that we do are broader than that, but at heart it's full of practicality and humanity.
Charlotte:So Quaker Social Action has been around for over 150 years, but its work at current feels more urgent and intuitive as ever. How has the organisation evolved from its early Quaker roots to the independent, inclusive charity that we see today?
Judith:I think QSA, because it was founded when it was founded, was very much founded on that mindset of Victorian philanthropy, which is what can we do to? And it was full of an impulse to do something good and practical, but very much guided by those who had the money and the privilege to do that practical thing. And I think over the years it did amazing work, absolutely amazing work. But we are now much more about working with, not doing to. One of the things that we've been fortunate to have over our history is we're called Quaker Social Action, so we get a lot of financial support from Quakers, and that gives us unrestricted income, which those of us in the charity sector see as gold dust. And we say that that buys us our innovation, our experimentation. It buys us the opportunity to research and develop. So what we try and do is we try and experiment and be creative and put new things out there into the world that weren't there before. And I think not all charities are able to do that. A lot of charities have to live very hand-to-mouth. A lot of charities are very restricted by the funding that they get to do certain things. So I feel we have an obligation to stay true to that history and to continue to be creative and innovative.
Charlotte:So poverty, as of a particular moment, is often talked about in statistics in the news. From your vantage point, what does poverty look like in the UK today?
Judith:I think I very much agree with the way that the Joseph Rantree Foundation talks about poverty and what they talk about is it's when a person's resources, mainly their material resources, are not sufficient to meet their minimum needs, and that includes social participation. So I think if you just look at material poverty, you look at what people need to survive and not thrive. Unfortunately, nowadays, though, we are looking at what people need to survive. Poverty is entrenched, the number of people in deep poverty is the highest it's ever been. The number of people essentially destitute is at incredibly, incredibly high levels. And there are lots of people who would never have considered themselves to be anywhere near the poverty line that are struggling with high costs and the cost of living crisis and job uncertainty and everything like that. So I think poverty, as well as being material and economic, which is obviously at the end that we as our charity are working in, I think it's also about a mindset of fragility and precariousness, and that can impact on more people than the people that we help. So I think poverty and what it means feels very relevant right now for many of us in the UK.
Charlotte:You mentioned the cost of living crisis. How would you say perhaps that and the post-pandemic recovery have affected the communities you work with?
Judith:When QSA was 150 years old, I helped put together a publication about history and looked at what had changed and what stayed the same. And poverty has always been there in the background, but it's usually felt quite cyclical, and there's often felt like there's something on the horizon that might improve people's material circumstances, and that the dark times don't stay dark that long. My sense is that right now there's a bit of poverty of hope that that might change. The cost of living crisis has endured. I think there are still lots of reverberations and repercussions from the pandemic that are impacting on people in all sorts of ways economically and socially and educationally. So it feels really tough. And I don't think, and this was true seven years ago when I did the publication and 150 odd years ago when QSA was founded, I don't think the public rhetoric is necessarily any more sympathetic and understanding than it was. I think people can still be blamed for their circumstances and their situation rather than us having more of a grown-up conversation about systemic poverty and the causes of poverty.
Charlotte:On that note, what do you wish that more people understood about those who are experiencing poverty?
Judith:Oh, that's a good question. My hope is that in a strange way, the fact that many of us are facing rising costs, and many of us are having to look at our personal budgets and our needs and our wants, and are having to think about what we can provide for ourselves and our children. I hope that creates empathy and compassion for people who think, imagine if this was a daily reality for me. You know, imagine if I didn't have the safety net of people who were more well-resourced who could support me. Am I here in a position of being relatively okay because of some inherent fantastic quality about me? Or am I here because of look? Because of look of birth, because of the fact that I've got enough money to be able to put food on the table. I hope it gives people more of a sense of compassion in a strange way, and that's not because I wish anxiety and uncertainty upon anybody, it's more that I think the dial will only change when we realise that a lot of people struggling in poverty are just desperate to not be in that situation.
Charlotte:Absolutely. QSA often says that people in poverty are the real poverty experts. Can you share what that means in practice and how it's changed the way that you deliver services?
Judith:Yes, I can I can explain that a bit more. There's a wonderful book by Darren McGarvey called The Social Distance Between Us, and he talks about, in a way, the arrogance of people who design services and interventions who are not proximate to the issue. And I think that there are experts by experience and experts by profession in the world that I work in, and it's very tempting if you're an expert by profession to feel like you have the answers, you have the expertise, you have the knowledge because it's your day job and you do it. And I've been doing this for a long time, so I would put myself in that camp. But also, I personally happen to also have been an expert by experience in terms of my upbringing, but I'm not the expert in other people's situations, and I feel we as a charity have a real obligation to listen really hard to the reality for people right now, and to think, what's this telling us about the work that we can do? What can we do better? What are we not getting right? What are they telling us that we should amplify to the media or to policymakers or to colleagues that we collaborate with that would get their story out more? How can we be attentive and attuned to their experience? And that doesn't mean that everything we do is designed by committee or delivered by committee or evaluated by committee. We're a really small charity and that isn't very practical, but it means that we're constantly having the mindset of curiosity, which is how can we make sure that this service is as efficient and effective as possible for the most people and is as inclusive as possible. So it's a mindset really more than anything else.
Charlotte:Could you maybe think of an example of how listening directly to people lived experience has transformed a project or an approach?
Judith:Yeah, I can give you an example that led to a service that we've been running for 15 years, and there's maybe one that we're really well known for, and that's a service called Down to Earth. And we've been running that service for 15 years, and it is for people who have been bereaved and on a low income and cannot begin to think about how they're going to pay for that funeral. And what we do is we provide affordable and meaningful funerals for people in that situation and help hundreds and hundreds of people every year. And that came about because of two different stories and two different situations from people that we were helping at the time, particularly one young man we were helping in a housing project we ran at the time, and his dad died, and he was beside himself, and he immediately dropped everything to go to try to be there to sort things out. Unfortunately, he had a job in a very um precarious economy, so the job wasn't there for him when he came back from the immediate crisis. And unfortunately, he was in a family situation where the dynamics were very complicated and there was a lot of difficulty about who was going to pay for the funeral. And he stepped up and he said, I'll pay for the funeral, but he paid for the funeral instead of paying his rent. And so we were involved in this situation because we then had to advocate for him with his landlord and his employer, and it was a very telling story about how precarious people's finances can be and how a bereavement can just absolutely topple that, and how when people are in grief they sometimes don't really make very good decisions, or they make decisions driven by the situation at the time that's good in the moment, but that they can have repercussions. And so we were thinking, what happens in this situation when you are bereaved, and who helps you to understand funerals and how difficult is it for people to talk about funerals and to get that information and everything like that? And it opened up this whole piece of exploration for us, which is who sits in that space after a death, except for the funeral industry, and particularly who's there to support people for whom the cost is a big deal. And we researched and thought and talked to other people who'd been bereaved, and people who worked with the bereaved, and the funeral industry, and the palliative care sector, and a whole lot of people, and eventually came up with that idea. So it was directly drawn from someone's experience which clearly identified a gap in the current system and led us to think, let's step into that space and see what we can do.
Charlotte:So, one of the things QSA is known for is its innovative and practical responses to complex social issues. As you mentioned, down to earth, we also got this way up and cook up. How does QSA decide when and how to create a new service?
Judith:I think we always have a mindset of trying to be like an entrepreneur. An entrepreneur sees opportunities and takes calculated risks, and sometimes opportunities arise and you're like, hmm, that seems really interesting. Maybe we can think about that. And sometimes, like I explained with the example about down to earth, sometimes you see a need and you look and you see who's filling it. So we would always start with thinking, is this something that we're the right organization to take forward? Um, and we might not be. Other organisations might be better placed to make something happen, and we need to check if someone else is doing it as well because there's no point doing something that competes with others, and sometimes we also think, is there someone we could collaborate with? But other than that, we we look for things that are putting something different and new and interesting in the world, and we try and look at things that are a little bit counterintuitive. So, for example, we run a service called Turn a Corner, which is about homelessness, but it's not really about homelessness because what we do is we run essentially a mobile library that goes into central London three times a week and offers books and other learning resources and some other support equipment, really, for people who are experiencing homelessness, and that's because we believe that someone who is experiencing homelessness is far more than their homelessness identity, and we believe that they're a whole person, and why wouldn't they want to read? Why wouldn't they want to expand their learning? Why wouldn't they want to get lost in a book? Why wouldn't they want to educate themselves? Why wouldn't they want to do all of the things that all of us want to read for? And it's about building that connection because if you're giving someone the opportunity to be a whole person and to talk to them about a facet of themselves that isn't the problem, that isn't the issue, that isn't the fact that they're on the streets, but it's about what are they like to read? You're opening up more of a human connection with them. So for us, it's always can we do it? Is it is it small enough that a charity outside can do it, often with probably two or three part-time staff? Can we make a difference? And potentially, is it scalable? And can we see that there might be ways that we can share our learner where it might benefit communities beyond our own?
Charlotte:Thank you. And you mentioned previously a gentleman that was the inspiration for a project. Could you perhaps share a story from a project that's particularly close to your heart?
Judith:When you ask me that, I think the thing that immediately comes to mind is something from a project that we ran a long time ago, which was a project called Street Fred, and it was about women who were setting up in business themselves, and we were supporting them to become self-employed. And I remember at one point we ran some event to kind of showcase and celebrate the things that they'd done, and they brought their families along, and it was a very, very celebrated event. And I remember the children of one particular woman, quite young children, talking about how they had seen their mum in a different light and how proud they were of her, and it was just really opening their eyes to a different part of their mum's identity. And I give that as a story because I think if you run good services and you put good stuff out into the world, it has ripples, and so the way that we often try and measure our impact is by measuring the impact directly on the person who we've engaged with, and that's great, and we have loads of good data and we have loads of good stories, but there are often indirect impacts and indirect outcomes that we'll probably never know about and not be able to measure. But that's about somebody feeling more confident, feeling more resilient, feeling they can cope better, feeling that they can take steps forward in the world, feeling that some of their financial worries are alleviated, and that has much broader impact than just on the people that we're directly working with. So I like to think that that's a story that represents those ripples of support that grow from our work.
Charlotte:Absolutely, thank you for sharing that. So moving on to you. You've led QSA for many years and you've received recognition for your leadership. What guiding principles shape your leadership or decision making?
Judith:There is a great Quaker phrase called think it possible that you may be mistaken. I think anyone in the leadership position who doesn't need to tap into that on a regular basis is probably heading for a fall. By which I mean you need to recognise you make mistakes, you need to recognise you get things wrong, you need to be constantly curious, and you need to just have some humanity in the way that you lead things. And I think if you take that as your North Star, it will lead you to seek consensus, maybe more than just trusting your own judgment. It will lead you, I think, to be authentic as a leader because your feet will firmly be on the ground. And it will, I hope, lead to you managing an organization that doesn't have a blame culture. Because if I think that I might be mistaken, then I'm pretty sure other people will be mistaken too. So I hope it has an impact on how people see you, on your decision making, and on the kind of organisational culture that you have.
Charlotte:You mentioned one of the core Quaker values, another one is truth and integrity. What would you say that looks like in practice for you as a leader?
Judith:I think that feels to me like a really core part of my personal identity, and obviously, you have a fantastic time in a job if your personal identity and values align really closely with the organisation's ones. So for me, it's brilliant to be in an organisation that is called Quaker Social Action that most definitely aligns with integrity as a core value because then it holds me accountable. I would sincerely like to believe that I would be honest, truthful, and full of integrity wherever I worked, but actually it's fantastic to have that as a sort of to make sure that I am. I think what it means is really just trying to do the right thing, to treat other people as you would want to be treated and to be respectful. It means when you make difficult decisions, you are aware of the human cost of that because of course every leadership role requires difficult decisions. It requires you to admit that you have got something wrong when you have, and it requires a bit of courage as well, sometimes just trying to say the things that may be more difficult and naming those.
Charlotte:Thank you. And I guess on that note, QSA has spoken about its commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion as a long-term culture shift rather than just a checklist. What has that journey looked like so far for the charity?
Judith:I remember when we really started in earnest on this, we had someone come and help us kind of for a year to get us started. And one of the things that she said that really struck me was she said this whole journey around equity, diversity, and inclusion is about unlearning and learning. And I think that for me is really helpful because it's never about getting it right, it's never about feeling that you know all the answers and you've ticked that box. This is a journey we are all learning, and things are changing all the time, and we need to unlearn certain ways that haven't served us well, organisationally, professionally, and personally, and we need to embrace the fact that the world is changing and we need to change with it. So I think what that means to us is having that mindset, and again being able to think to yourself, I'm not sure we stepped up enough there, I'm not sure we got that right, I think we might have missed something there, and trying to do something better the next time and trying to trying to learn and trying to make sure that you are really creating equity in terms of voice in the organisation. And yeah, it's it's not easy, but I don't think it should be easy. I think it's something you've got to work at, but we we're we're just really trying all the time.
Charlotte:You mentioned earlier where possible, looking to create partnerships. Um your work goes into more direct support, you also collaborate widely and as it says speak truth to power. Could you say, for example, where QSA's frontline insight has influenced broader change or policies?
Judith:So the Down to Us service that I mentioned earlier, we were really pioneering in that space because we were and I believe remain the only UK-wide charity there to support people who were experiencing funeral poverty. And because we were the only people in that space, we found that actually, with very little effort, we became the voice of credibility and authority on that subject. And we knew that we needed to try and therefore get that voice out. What were we learning about the funeral industry? What were we learning about the benefit system that was there for people who had experienced a bereavement? What was local government doing for situations where there wasn't any money to pay for funeral and there was a public health funeral that was needed? And so we found ourselves being listened to by all of those stakeholders, and so we shifted that into a campaign. And for five years we explicitly ran something called the Fair Funerals Campaign, and we pushed the funeral industry for transparency, and we pushed local authorities to do better in terms of public health funerals, and we pushed central government, particularly around its funeral expenses payment for people who've been bereaved. And though we don't run the campaign explicitly, we still continue to push on all of those fronts, and that's led to I think some amazing outcomes. So because, in a way, funerals is not a party political issue, and many MPs have had constituents who have came to them with situations caused by being bereaved, and MPs, of course, are human and themselves could empathise with that. We were able to get huge cross-party support. We were able to get quite a lot of questions asked in the House that led to a review, which led to a recommendation for a competitions and markets authority investigation into the funeral industry that happened, and there are now moves towards tighter regulations of the industry as a consequence, and we have direct and ongoing conversations with the Department of Work and Pensions to support the development of the funeral expenses payment to make it both more accessible and more equitable. And we did this as a really small East End charity, but it proves that if you have that data and that credibility and that drive, you can push forward and you can make a difference.
Charlotte:So, as QSA moves forward, what are the priorities or challenges that you're most focused on right now?
Judith:As QSA moves forward, I think the challenge is a challenge that's faced across the sector, which is we are having a real crisis in terms of fundraising across the sector, and that is true for QSA. I think there is a it's a really difficult time for charities right now. I think there are many amazing causes in the UK which take people's time and money and attention. There are many tragic and wicked things that are happening beyond our borders, which again are getting people's time, attention, and money. And there's the climate crisis, which of course is enormous. And lots of people who may have given very generously to charities are worried about their own money, and for all of the reasons that we said below, might have less in terms of charitable given. So I think there's there's that financial crisis. I think there's also a little bit of an existential crisis, and it touches on something we talked about before, which is equity, diversity, and inclusion, and how much uh lived experience is that is at the heart of work. And I think that has become not just a nice to have, but a must to have. And I think many organisations are having to think really carefully about their processes, about their systems, about how they make decisions, um, who they listen to, and also whether they should continue to exist. Um, uh all charities exist to further their charitable aims, not to keep themselves in existence. So I think there are there's an element of those big questions for us as Quaker Social Action, um, much as there is for the rest of the charity sector. So I think our challenge remains where are the needs, where are the opportunities, how can we stay attuned to the North Star of equity, diversity and inclusion? What new can we put out into the world that makes a difference? And how can we continue to be curious?
Charlotte:And then on that note, I suppose, how could listeners or potential supporters get involved to help amplify your work?
Judith:That is a very good question. We would absolutely love people to get in touch with us, to look at our website, to see what we do. There are ways that people can get involved directly in our work. We obviously have jobs, uh, we obviously have volunteering opportunities, but there are also ways that people can donate gifts in kind to us. Our mobile library really needs all sorts of gifts in kind. They can donate directly to us. If they have a business, we are really in the lookout for corporate partnerships and win-win situations. And if there's something on that list that is occurring to someone that I haven't mentioned, I would just say please get in touch. We would love to hear how it is that you think we might be able to work together.
Charlotte:Looking back on your career in the non-profit sector, what would you say the most formative lessons have been for you?
Judith:I think maybe one of the most formative things for me that actually led me into this kind of work was something that happened just before I moved into the world of work when I was a student, which is that I read an article about people living on death row in America and how lonely they were, and thought, actually, wow, I've never considered that. And it was setting up a pen pal organization, and so I got in touch and found myself with a pen pal, and found myself really having to think very hard about accountability and compassion, and remember that there are many humans involved in every difficult, horrible, sad story, and I got to know one of those very well, and it it got me thinking about maybe I could use my career to support humans in difficult situations. So I think it led me very directly down the path when I started my career, and in a nice twist of fate, though it was 20 years before this became relevant to me, the person who'd wrote that article in the newspaper was a Quaker. And so it was my first introduction to Quakerism and Quakers and their determination to do good in the world.
Charlotte:Thank you. I think that's such a touch of a story to go from the very beginnings to now. Here we are, director of Quaker Social Actions.
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