Althea Efunshile

Althea Efunshile has been the Executive Director, Arts Planning and Investment at Arts Council England since January 2007. In this role she has responsibility for ensuring the effective performance management of Arts Council business across England. She has key responsibility for the corporate planning function in the organisation, and for developing and implementing the national Arts Council Investment Strategy in accordance with which regional funding decisions are made.

Prior to January 2007, Althea spent six years as a Senior Civil Servant in the Department for Education and Skills. As Director of the Children and Young People's Unit in DfES she set up the £450m Children's Fund programme to ensure every local authority delivered preventive programmes for 5-12 year olds at risk of social exclusion, and she led the development of the "Outcomes Framework" which has since become an essential aspect of children's services across the country.

As Director of the Safeguarding and Vulnerable Children Group she led and delivered the department's response to the Bichard Report following the Soham murders, and she oversaw the development of the Children in Care Green Paper.

Althea has spent the greater part of her career working in local government. Up until 2001 she was the Executive Director for Education and Culture in the London Borough of Lewisham. In this post she held the combined roles of Chief Education Officer and Chief Leisure Officer, with leadership responsibility for 5000 staff and a budget of £170m.

She had previously worked in a number of local authorities as Assistant Director of Education in London Borough of Merton, Head of Youth and Community Services in London Borough of Harrow, and Area Youth Officer with Buckinghamshire County Council. She has also worked in the voluntary sector as the head of a Community Education Centre in Westminster, which used Carnival Arts as a vehicle for reaching local African-Caribbean young people. She started her career as a secondary school teacher in the London Borough of Brent.

Althea was born in London in 1956 to Jamaican parents who had arrived in England during the early 1950's.  She has two grown up children, four step-children and one grand-daughter. She and her husband live in South London.