Alison Garnham is Chief Executive of Daycare Trust, taking up her position in June 2006. Prior to this for nine years she was the Director of Policy and Research at One Parent Families. She worked for many years as a welfare rights adviser and for a number of women’s organisations before, in 1989, joining the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) where she co-authored a number of publications about the Child Support Act. She has subsequently written about lone parenthood and child poverty, including an edition of Poverty: the Facts, published by CPAG. Before joining One Parent Families she was Senior Lecturer in Social Policy at the University of North London (now London Metropolitan University) where she has also been an Honorary Research Fellow. She is a Trustee and Honorary Officer of the End Child Poverty Campaign, a parent governor at her son’s primary school and a member of the Social Security Advisory Committee.