Daniels' playwriting career began after she sent in a script to the Royal Court Theatre in London for reading and spent a year as the writer-in-residence of Sheffield University’s English department.
Since the early 1980s, her plays have appeared at the National Theatre, the Battersea Arts Centre, the Crucible, Sheffield, and Chicken Shed.
[citation needed] She has also written episodes of the soap operas EastEnders[1] and Holby City and the long-running BBC children's series Grange Hill.
Daniels has been a member of the board of directors for the Clean Break Theatre Company.
Daniels' civil partner of many years, activist and schools inspector Claire Walton, died in 2009.