Julienne is Professor Emerita of Nursing: Care for Older People at City, University of London, with Visiting Professorships at University of Hertfordshire and Ulster University. Since retirement in 2019, in addition to her on-going research commitments, Julienne has worked as an Associate of the Kings Fund co-leading the ‘Care Home, Housing, Health and Social Care: Learning Network’ and, together with Rt Hon Paul Burstow and Sir David Pearson CBE, she co-chaired the ‘SCIE Commission on the Role of Housing on the Future of Care and Support’. She is a Non-Executive Director for Elizabeth Finn Homes Ltd and Trustee for My Home Life Charity and The Whiteley Homes Trust. In April 2023, she was appointed by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and the Department of Health and Social Care as Chair to the Older People’s Housing Taskforce.
Drawing on her skills as a former registered nurse and qualified teacher, she uses collaborative approaches to bring about whole systems change and reflect on the lessons learnt from attempts to improve practice. Her style of working is evidence-based, relationship-centred, appreciative, and action-oriented.
She has enjoyed working in a variety of different settings (health and social care; general and mental health; primary, secondary, and tertiary care) and across a number of traditional boundaries (public and private; policy and practice; research and education). Best known for her work with care homes, she was one of the co-founders of My Home Life (MHL), a collaborative initiative to promote quality of life for those who live, die, visit and work in care homes for older people. The success of My Home Life can be seen through its spread across the UK, Australia and Germany. In 2020, she created a registered charity to help support the work of My Home Life partners (www.myhomelifecharity.org.uk).
Her expertise in aged care has long been recognized internationally. She was Vice Chair of the Global Ageing Network (international network of leaders in ageing services, housing, research, technology and design) and has held Adjunct Professorships in Australia (University of South Australia, Griffiths University, Federation University Australia) and America (University of Wisconsin-Madison).
In 2015, Julienne was awarded the Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the Queen’s New Year honours for contribution to Nursing and Care for Older People and was named by the University of London as one of their 150 leading women (1868-2018).