Meet the team - Healthwatch

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Your Healthwatch team consists of staff, board members and our other volunteers. We have a Manager and an Engagement Officer who look after our Enter and View visits programme, adult volunteers and young volunteers. Our Board Members, who bring a variety of experience and skills in the health, social care, human resources and business sectors, set the strategic priorities and oversee our finances. We could not manage without the hard working volunteers of all ages who support our work programme.

Team

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Sheila Scott

Manager

Sheila Scott

Manager

Sheila joined Healthwatch in 2017 as Finance and Administrative Officer. She previously worked at Sunderland Carers’ Centre for 13 years in a variety of roles including Administrator, Carers Breaks Scheme Project Manager and Facility & Finance Manager. Sheila, who has worked in the voluntary sector for 25 years, was appointed as Healthwatch South Tyneside Manager in April 2019. She hopes to see HWST grow from strength to strength by building a strong team, enabling HWST to play a part in improving health and social care services within South Tyneside for the benefit of borough residents and ensuring the voice of local people is listened to and acted on.

Email: s.scott@healthwatchsouthtyneside.co.uk

Telephone: 0191 489 7952

Board

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Arthur McKean

Interim Chair

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Tracey Grainger

Board Member (co-opted)

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Carl Buckley

Board Member

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Barbara Tennet

Board Member

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Nafizah Ahmed

Board Member

Arthur McKean

Interim Chair

Arthur has been a care worker for 25 years, working mainly in nursing homes, but latterly in domiciliary care, supported living and residential and nursing homes. He currently works as a care worker for several healthcare agencies. Arthur brings a health and social care worker’s view to the role, as well as insights on what needs to be achieved to improve standards both for clients and staff in homes. He wants to support and promote the aims of Healthwatch South Tyneside as he feels it’s a valuable service for the South Tyneside area.

Tracey Grainger

Board Member (co-opted)

Tracey is employed as a senior healthcare leader and has more than 30 years’ experience across national, regional and local health and care systems. Her breadth of knowledge and skills includes setting national policy and strategic priorities to help the deliver the NHS Long Term Plan, alongside leading NHS transformation in collaboration with health and social care partners. Tracey’s passion is driven by making a difference to people’s lives through improving health inequalities to ensure high quality, equitable healthcare provision is available for all. Her motivation for joining the Healthwatch South Tyneside board as a co-opted member comes from being a lifelong resident of South Tyneside and wanting to ensure the voice of the community influences the effective delivery of services needed for the people of the borough. As a senior healthcare leader, the experience gained with Healthwatch will also enable continuous professional development, listening to the needs of diverse community groups, will broaden her knowledge to support the future design and delivery of services for the population we serve. Tracey’s family all work for the NHS and she is a proud parent of her two sons who completed the NHS apprenticeship scheme and have become qualified NHS electrical and mechanical engineers, keeping our hospital and community premises operationally safe.

Carl Buckley

Board Member

Carl has been self-employed for the past 25 years. Originally working in finance, he has significant experience providing consultancy support to the public sector. He lives and works within South Tyneside and since 2003 has owned a North East-based marketing agency, providing a range of services to both the private and public sectors. Urban River has worked with a number of health-related and community clients, including Healthwatch South Tyneside, to improve their on and offline presence. He lives and works within South Tyneside and is an active governor at two local schools. Through his work in the health sector he has a real passion for looking to improve the overall service delivery within South Tyneside and following on from some successful work with Healthwatch on the development of a new website, he was approached to join the board, a role to which he could not turn down. This presents a great opportunity to support the delivery of a more effective range of health services within the borough, which is a key driver as to why I am involved.

Barbara Tennet

Board Member

Barbara has worked within BT South Tyneside, South Tyneside Council and South Tyneside Homes – all within a customer service capacity. This experience has provided a good understanding of the landscape of the borough, stakeholders and services available. She currently works within South Tyneside Homes Welfare Support team as a Social Navigator, assisting residents in improving their financial wellbeing. Her role requires a good level of understanding of the welfare benefit system and charitable funds/grants that may be available. Barbara enjoys working in the community at outreach sessions that have been created to ensure those who are most vulnerable have access to services. She is passionate about ensuring that residents’ voices are heard – overcoming barriers that people face and working towards improving services within our borough.

Nafizah Ahmed

Board Member

Nafizah is a physician associate in primary care based in the North East – a new role that is primarily set to help NHS teams provide continuity of care and a multidisciplinary approach for patients and their families. Nafizah has always been interested in healthcare and since she left secondary education she has sought to broaden her experience within the healthcare industry – from working in a nursing home to gaining shadowing work experience in local hospitals. Nafizah found training as a physician associate in South Tyneside during the COVID-19 pandemic invaluable. She witnessed first hand the impact this had on social care and young people’s services. Prior to her appointment to the Board, Nafizah worked as a Young Healthwatch volunteer for five years, where she was actively involved in trying to help improve service access for young people – in particular sexual health and mental health services. Prior to volunteering at Young Healthwatch, she had been a volunteer for WHIST which allowed her to closely evaluate the care received by women with long term conditions. Nafizah hopes through her role on the board she will be able to help young people to see the great value of volunteering experiences as well as improve the quality and standards of care received by young people in South Tyneside.

Volunteers

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Arthur McKean

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Stephen Smith

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Angelina Richardson

Arthur McKean

“I’ve been a care worker for 25 years, working mainly in nursing homes though for the past four years I have been working in domiciliary care, supported living and residential and nursing homes. I feel Enter & View visits will really complement the Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspections by adding more depth. What I bring to the Enter & View role is a health and social care worker’s view as well as insights on what needs to be achieved to improve standards both for clients and staff. I’d like to support and promote the aims of Healthwatch South Tyneside as I feel it’s a valuable service for the South Tyneside area. I currently work as a care worker for several healthcare agencies.”

Stephen Smith

“I am 67 this month and live in Hebburn. I have been a volunteer for around 15 years in various organisations. I have received a lot of praise and enjoy immensely what I have achieved in all the various positions.

I have been fortunate to have done various volunteer work with local councils, even becoming a Newcastle Ambassador for the Rugby.

Other hobbies include running – I have completed 27 Great North Runs and have 83 medals and four trophies, mentioned in a recent dispatches documentary.

I volunteer at Healthwatch and other organisations to keep me busy and give me a feeling of helping and I have used the skills I have achieved in other volunteering at to help me in my role as a Healthwatch volunteer over the last 18 months.

I have been involved in different Healthwatch campaigns including summer fayres and the Path to Excellence. I like meeting new people at our monthly meetings and enjoy finding out information from members of the public through listening; acting on the information we gather makes you feel like you are making a difference.

I also volunteer for various organisations including Blissability, Diabetes, South Tyneside Homes, Gateshead MBC, SVP, amongst others to help me stay in the know within different areas and different organisations.”

Angelina Richardson

“I work full time within an integrated care team in South Tyneside. The focus of my work is to promote independence for individuals, enabling them to live longer, healthier lives. We encourage people to take positive decisions that will improve their health and wellbeing and we focus on early intervention and prevention. I became a volunteer for Healthwatch as I am a resident of South Tyneside and I am committed to wanting the best for our community and to empower individuals to speak of their experiences of local NHS and social care services. It also gives me the opportunity to identify and challenge any concerns/issues that occur and be part of a team that can recommend improvements.”