Meet the board

Steve became involved with patient participation in health in 2000 and since then, has been a member of the PCT Health Panel, a member of the Patient and Public Involvement Forum and latterly LINk of which he has been the chair for the last 4 years. Steve is now Chair of Healthwatch Derby.

Although a lifelong resident of the City of Derby, Stephen currently works as an Associate Professor in the Sociology of Health at De Montfort University in Leicester. He is also a member of the University’s Board of Governors and a DMU Teacher Fellow. Since returning to education in 1995 as a “mature learner”, Stephen went on to successfully secure a BA (Hons) First class degree in Sociology from the University of Derby. In 2000, he subsequently moved to the University of Warwick to complete his PhD in Sociology, the focus of which was Irish Catholic death and mourning rituals. Whilst there, he took up the post of Research Fellow working on a ground-breaking project which employed and trained 28 local residents from the City of Coventry as community researchers, each of whom became the “eyes” and “ears” of their respective neighbourhoods as part of an effort to narrow, what was at the time, significant social and health inequalities gaps in the City. It was this project, in particular, which served as the key catalyst for what became a successful career in teaching health and social care within Higher Education. In March 2017, he was appointed to the Derbyshire Police and Crime Panel.
Stephen has been a Board member of Healthwatch Derby since its existence and is currently Vice-Chair. Not surprisingly given his “day job”, he is extremely passionate about all aspects of health and social care and, in particular, service user engagement and involvement and has published widely in the field. As such, he sees his role with Healthwatch as a privileged opportunity to act as an advocate, ambassador and visionary in helping determine the strategic direction, practice and approaches to the way in which health and social care are both delivered and received in the City of Derby.

After completing a degree in Applied Human Psychology, Rachael began work in the NHS as a trainee psychologist based with South Birmingham Health Authority. She took up a research post at the Derby Hospitals in 1992 looking at the effectiveness of different standards setting methodologies. Rachael went on to hold various posts within the Derby Hospitals around quality improvement, complaint management, customer service development, management of voluntary services and interpreter services. She left her role as lead for Public and Patient Experience and Engagement at Derby Hospitals two years ago.
Rachael has been on the Board of Healthwatch Derby since it came into existence and she is also the Healthwatch Representative on the Southern Derbyshire Clinical Commissioning Group – Lay Reference Group which is responsible for ensuring the views and experiences of patients and public influence commissioning decisions.
She is passionate about working with patients, public, communities and staff to ensure that the delivery of health and social care in Derby reflects their needs and experiences. She is also interested in developing services around the behaviours and needs of individuals to ensure their needs are met and that services and care are delivered effectively and efficiently with no waste.