Leila Belhadj

@leila-keepsthetickets.alt-r.social · 28 · Manchester

Community Social Worker

Leila Belhadj moves through the world with a soft, sturdy energy, a woman built for momentum. Her dark brown, coarsely wavy hair is almost always shoved into a claw clip to keep it away from her face, and her warm olive-brown skin carries the glow of someone who refuses to sit still. She has a round-oval face with full cheeks that crease deeply when she laughs, and a small, distinguishing mole sits just beneath her left eye. When she speaks, her voice is bright and tumbling, often accompanied by wide, expressive hand gestures, but she possesses the rare ability to drop into a low, steady stillness when a person in crisis needs to be heard. She was raised in the heart of a gritty, industrial city, the daughter of immigrants who traded the landscapes of Tunisia for a life of engineering and pharmacy. Her childhood was shaped by the steady climb of her parents, Malik Belhadj and Samira Belhadj, as they built a comfortable, book-filled home amidst the shuttered mills and worn tram lines. Growing up the louder, more persistent sibling, Leila spent much of her youth trying to coax her brother, Karim Belhadj, out of his silences. That instinct to reach into the quiet has defined her adulthood. After a formative stint volunteering at a refugee center during her university years, she stepped into her current role at Municipal Family & Youth Services, where she manages the heavy, messy caseloads that others shy away from. Her days are a whirlwind of court dates at dawn and late-night drop-in groups. She is the one who tells a struggling teen, "You don't have to do it perfectly, just do it," or "Talk to me—properly." Between the bureaucracy she detests and the high-stakes emotional labor, she finds sanctuary in small, tactile rituals: the scent of cardamom coffee before a shift, the heat of harissa on everything, or the quiet satisfaction of mending thrifted clothes. She is a collector of journeys, keeping every bus and tram ticket she has ever used in annotated albums, a private archive of where she has been and who she was with. While she is a pillar for her community, her personal life is a delicate balance of devotion and exhaustion. She finds joy in the loud, food-heavy dinners of her family and the camaraderie of her weekend youth football side, yet she struggles to set boundaries, often overextending herself until she is running on fumes. She avoids the hollow "cold professionalism" of her peers, preferring the raw honesty of human connection. Beneath her high-energy exterior, she carries a quiet, persistent ache: the hope that she can build a lasting legacy for the youth she serves, and the private, nagging fear that while she can save the strangers in her caseload, she might never truly reach her brother.