Staff governors

I am honoured to have been elected in the recent 2025 elections, and I sincerely thank everyone who voted and placed their confidence in me. It is a privilege to represent the interests and voices of unregistered health and social care professionals.

With a background as a trained customer service specialist, I am passionate about people and committed to their welfare. I believe in extending to others the same respect, care, and support I would expect for myself. My professional journey has equipped me with valuable experience across various sectors, including banking, energy, and healthcare. These diverse roles have sharpened my understanding of organisational dynamics and strengthened my ability to advocate effectively for staff needs through dialogue and collaboration.

From my early days, as a class governor in the university, and a faculty financial secretary, I have always been driven by a deep sense of integrity, fairness, and compassion. I value every opinion and strive to ensure inclusiveness, empathetic decision-making. I believe that trust, transparency, and mutual respect are essential in building strong, supportive networks — values I uphold in all I do.

In my new role, my focus is to serve with excellence, be a voice for my colleagues, and work diligently towards solutions that uplift staff morale and enhance service delivery. My aim is to contribute meaningfully to the growth and success of the Trust, ensuring it remains a leading and outstanding institution.

I am deeply committed and ready to serve.

I am pleased to be a staff governor for the corporate and support constituency, bringing both staff experience and lived experience of mental health services to the role.

I have worked in the NHS for eight years and have also used mental health services for more than 30 years. This gives me a rare dual perspective and a deep understanding of how decisions can affect real people, including staff, service users and carers.

I left school at 15 because of my mental health, so I know how important compassionate, accessible and practical support can be. I am passionate about making sure service user voices help shape the way we work, and about reducing unnecessary bureaucracy so that processes feel clearer and kinder.

Outside of work, I am a dad of four and a grandad, and I enjoy history, golf, camping and Lego. These interests help keep me grounded and connected to the things that matter to me outside of my professional life.

As a governor, I hope to learn more about how decisions are made at board level and to help ensure they remain accessible, meaningful and grounded in real experience. I would bring honesty, curiosity, commitment and a willingness to ask questions on behalf of staff, service users and carers across Pennine Care.
 

Facing the unprecedented local and national NHS challenges that we do, I am determined in my role as a governor to ensure that the Trust Executive are fully accountable in effectiveness in doing everything they can to take action for now and the future.

I was an inner-city social worker in different sectors including CAMHS for 20 years, and then qualified as an intercultural psychotherapist, going on to work in trauma intervention in the charity sector. I also managed teams for many years in diverse sectors including child-protection and perinatal care, and I was also a local authority councillor in West Yorkshire for 4 years.

With a background in dance-movement and theatre and I am particularly passionate about the contribution under-used role of arts and culture in health and communication, and I facilitate self-expression through creativity in wellbeing groups. I am an accredited mindfulness teacher and Schwartz-round facilitator, and I integrate all these strands in my approach to health policy in seeking to embed the vital holistic cornerstones of wellbeing through preventative and integrative medicine.

Patient care is most effective when we consistently listen and respond to all our diverse workforce, from clinicians to cleaners to corporate staff. I aim to bring staff voices to the executive table for a joined-up, transparent, and knowledge-based approach. The team I manage is known for nurture, expertise, commitment to staff and to results.

I hope that I bring the same positivity and close eye for detail to the robust defence of compassionate and effective patient care and staff wellbeing as a governor. Given my track-record I hope I have the credibility for staff to feel they can directly approach me, confident in the knowledge that their experiences will be represented.

I feel I can support the Trust to deliver against their priorities and ambitions including the delivery of high quality accessible and effective care.

My current post within Pennine Care is as the Trust Lead for Addictions. Additionally, I manage the Health and Wellbeing College and am contributing to the development of Smoke Free NHS for the Trust. I am a qualified and registered Psychiatric Social Worker and have worked in the alcohol and drug field for almost 30 years. Prior to this I was a Child Protection Social Worker and worked in learning disability and elderly care services before qualifying.

In the course of my working life, I come into contact with people from a variety of backgrounds.

I have a strong personal commitment to service user and carer involvement and have personal responsibility for this within my own role.

I would contribute to the direction and aims of the Trust.

I believe this combination of professional background, service user focus and ability to operate in a change Health Service make me a strong candidate to represent social care interests within the Trust.

The governor role enables me to be part of making our services the best they can be whilst ensuring that patients and carers are central to everything we do.

I have been a mental health nurse for nearly 40 years and have worked in Pennine Care for over 30 years. I have worked in a variety of roles with experience in drug and alcohol services and latterly in a number of quality nursing roles including Modern Matron, Head of Quality and engagement lead - all within specialist services. I am currently the Trustwide Vaccination Lead, enjoying working part-time since semi-retirement. In my spare time, I enjoy regular grandparenting duties to our two grandchildren, walking, running, being out of doors, eating out and volunteering as a leader in Girlguiding.

I am very proud to work in Pennine Care and it has always been a great place to work for me. I believe that I am passionate, dedicated, committed, reliable and hard working and believe that I could make a difference in the role of staff governor representing nurses within Pennine Care. I believe that I am warm and genuine in nature with excellent interpersonal skills. I have extensive experience of working as a nurse in different roles within the Trust and feel that this would benefit me greatly within the role.

Representing registered nurses as a staff governor gives me the opportunity to bring forward experience from both ward-based and community mental health services.

I currently work as a senior mental health practitioner in the crisis service. Before this, I worked as a mental health nurse and healthcare assistant on inpatient wards across Pennine Care.

My experience working across many of the wards has given me a strong understanding of different services, how they operate, and the pressures faced by both staff and patients.

In my current role, I also work closely with community services, which has helped me understand the support patients need outside hospital and the important role staff play across different parts of the Trust.

As a governor, I want to use my voice and experience to support progressive change, fairness and a better working environment for staff, while also keeping the needs of patients and the public at the centre of discussions.

I am committed to constructively challenging issues and strategies where needed, listening carefully to staff and patient feedback, and helping to communicate those views at board level.

I am passionate about the success of Pennine Care and about supporting a Trust that balances its commitment to staff, patients and the wider public.