Our board
Meet our Board
The Healthwatch County Durham Board helps shape and deliver our strategic work plan to improve health and social care for County Durham residents. All decisions follow Healthwatch England and Department of Health and Social Care guidelines. Our volunteer Board members bring extensive experience in the third sector, health, and social care.
Find out more about our Board below.
Our Chair
Christopher Cunnington-Shore
Chris retired from his own consultancy company in 2015. Since then he has been a member of a number of health and social care related working groups and committees. Prior to establishing his own consultancy company, he held a number of senior managerial positions during his long career working for both the NHS and the Department of Health. He is a former University Visiting Professor and in addition to Chairing Healthwatch County Durham since 2019, he also Chairs a number of local 'health' related committees within the Sedgefield locality. He has devoted over 40 years to health, social care and charity work within the County.
Our board members
Dr Lakkur Murthy
With half a century of NHS involvement, being a doctor, consultant, clinical director and governor, Murthy has a good understanding of the NHS, social care, public health, clinical commissioning and provision of services and has been a member/chair of local, regional, national and international committees.
Murthy is keen to support and develop the work of Healthwatch to ensure the citizens of County Durham have the opportunity to give their comments and receive appropriate and accurate information to obtain the services they require when they need them.
“I am grateful for the opportunity to use my knowledge, skills and experience to serve Healthwatch County Durham”.
Jim Welch
Being a blind, disabled person and a wheelchair user from 1990, Jim has a strong interest in health services provided for the community of County Durham. By joining Healthwatch County Durham Jim feels he has something to offer as a Board member.
Jim is a member of a variety of groups including Chief Executive of Blindlife, a member of Durham Disability Partnership and Board Member of Disability Independent Advisory Group for Durham Constabulary.
Mary Mitchell
Since retiring from her career in education, Mary has been involved with the work of the voluntary arena of the NHS and has more recently become keen to support the work of Healthwatch County Durham through the Pioneering Care Partnership.
"I believe Healthwatch County Durham is a very important link between the public and the health organisations"
Judi Evans
Being employed within the voluntary and social justice sectors Judi has gained experience in direct service delivery and the management of services to a wide range of users in the social care and criminal justice sectors. As well as valuing and recognising the huge contribution of volunteers Judi has developed a strong focus on real service user engagement in the planning and operation of services.
Zena Jones
Zena has worked in the NHS and related organisations for over 35 years and has a wide variety of experiences at strategic level especially in patient carer public involvement and engagement, particularly in clinical research settings. Strategic experience of workforce and organisation development including training, education, facilitation and change management.
In addition, Zena is a passionate advocate of those people with ‘hidden’ disabilities such as those who have mental health issues or those with chronic long term illness who have issues such as fatigue.
Charles McCaughey
With many years' experiences in the NHS, I have held senior leadership roles including Director of primary care, commissioning, director for mental health service and public health head.
I am passionate about ensuring that everyone in County Durham has access to high quality inclusive and person centred health and social care.
Healthwatch's role in championing service user feedback, and shaping improvements, align closely with my personal values
Past Board minutes
We hold bi-monthly Board meetings where members of the public are welcome to attend. We discuss what we've been hearing from the public as well as our organisational direction and progress on our work.
You can find the minutes from our previous Board meetings below.
If you would like a copy of any of the other papers from our previous Board meetings, or minutes from older meetings, please get in touch with us at info@healthwatchcountydurham.co.uk
Interested in coming to our next Board meeting in public?
If you're interested in attending our next Board Meeting in public, please get in touch and let us know.