The Mayor of Shrewsbury

Many families of children and young people with autism and other neurological conditions, will know Elisabeth for her work through Jigsaw Community, which provides a variety of support for families across Shrewsbury and Shropshire.

She has advocating voluntarily, for children who have been unable to access both suitable education and the Child & Adolescent Mental Health Service, now called BeeU, whilst also providing interventional support for young people who needed to talk.

Her own twins now 20 years old, are both autistic and are the reason why Elisabeth turned in this direction, after her son specifically was repeatedly failed within both services, and the heart-breaking attempt to take his own life at just 6 years old after being illegally expelled from school.

The experiences Elisabeth had, fighting alone for basic services for her children, gave her the knowledge and understanding on how to provide the emotional support that she wished that she had, whilst also providing the theoretical information that many more families’ have needed and still do.

Attending Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Hospital, CCG & SSSFT meetings each month, to bring forward the lived experiences of children and their families, to their public meetings was the only way that Elisabeth felt those who could provide better services, would act.

Since being elected to Shrewsbury Town Council in 2021, Elisabeth has worked on youth services, the recreation and leisure committee and has helped Harlescott Grange Community Hub develop, which in turn supports the community fantastically by its residents.

During the last 2 years, Elisabeth set up and ran the Shrewsbury and Surrounding Villages Mutual Aid Group. She set up the link between CoOp and vulnerable residents, for them to order essential supplies and then organised to transport the supplies to the door. This proved to be a valuable service, not just for the supplies, but the 10 minute conversation that developed between volunteers and those who were isolated from loved ones.

Elisabeth works in education, supporting pupils who have a barrier to education and really enjoys developing the positive relationships with pupils and helping to close that barrier, whilst these amazing pupils in turn educate the educators.

Elisabeth grew up in Dorset through social services care, which was hard, however, developed a determined resilience to succeed.

As she left care and went on to train as a riding instructor, she experienced prejudice during training, because of her background and was laughingly informed that she would amount to nothing.

So decided to move further north and settled on Shrewsbury, going on to train as a dental nurse working in Shrewsbury Prison and a variety of clinics.

Then went onto to university after completing an Access to Higher Education certificate, to train as a radiographer so that she could work around her children and the rest has been briefly explained.

To those who think a child from social services care can amount to nothing, think again, they can do so much more and there are many of us who can be shown as an example.

I am very proud to be a part of Shrewsbury community, my adopted home and my year as Shrewsbury Mayor, will concentrate on bringing all communities together, as we saw at the beginning of the pandemic.

I will also have my three wonderful children join me and represent Shrewsbury youth and also supporting mental health.