Welcome to our new board members

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Janet Bailey and Dr. Dennis Wilkes are joining the board of Healthwatch Birmingham and Healthwatch Solihull. Both Janet and Dennis bring extensive experience to complement the skills of our current board, and are committed champions for putting the public voice at the heart of health and social care services.

A highly-skilled practitioner, researcher and educator – with particular expertise in training student nurses – Janet says she is ‘delighted to bring my experience to Healthwatch to influence and improve care and services for the populations of Birmingham and Solihull’. Dennis, whose background is in public health in both NHS and local authority roles, stresses his belief that health and social care services ‘should be responsive to the needs and decisions of the individual they are serving. It is, therefore, important that the public voice is heard in evaluating the quality of service provision. This will make measuring that quality more difficult but that is a challenge I am committed to taking up.’

Healthwatch Birmingham and Healthwatch Solihull Chair Richard Burden says of the new appointments, ‘Both Janet and Dennis have had impressive and influential careers in the local health and social care system and I am delighted to welcome them to the board. Most importantly, both Janet and Dennis have demonstrated a clear commitment to Healthwatch’s values and putting the patient voice at the heart of decisions about services, are driven towards tackling inequalities and are passionate about building a health and social care system that works for everyone.’