Website of the Department of Health

Workstreams

At its first meeting in May 2005, the Advisory Group agreed the following key workstreams: Better employment, Inclusive services, Transgender and Reducing health inequalities. The Chairs for each of these groups are shown below.

Workstream 1: Better employment

Chair:    Dr Justin Varney, London Regional Public Health Group and GLADD

Qualifying in 1999, Dr Varney has worked across the health service in district general hospitals, general practice and acute secondary and tertiary care before settling in Public Health. His day job covers areas such as Pandemic Flu, Crime and Sustainable Communities and he currently is working for the London Regional Public Health Group.

As a member of the GLADD executive, he leads on external relations and actively networks across the health professional bodies. In 2005 he organised the first healthcare professional float in the London Pride Parade and chaired a conference at the Royal Society of Medicine on Lesbian and Gay Health. In June 2006 he hopes to chair the first UK National LGBT Health Summit in London and to continue his work on LGBT issues.

Workstream 2: Inclusive services

Chair:    Christine Trethowan, Coventry Teaching Primary Care Trust

Christine Trethowan works with Coventry Teaching Primary Care Trust where she leads work on Equality and Diversity and User, Carer and Community Involvement.  Previous to this she worked with the NHS in North Warwickshire where she held  a development brief.  This included the development of community based services to replace institutional mental health provision and work on equalities issues in the context of mental health, learning disability and community health services.  As part of this role, Christine worked with a colleague, Paul Fitzgerald, to address the hidden needs of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people who use mental health services. 

Christine's background before joining the NHS was in the voluntary sector where she held a range of posts including a coordinator in a women's advice centre, a manager of a housing project for homeless young people and a counsellor with the British Epilepsy Association.

Workstream 3: Transgender

Chair:     Christine Burns, Press for Change

I am an experienced campaigner, educator, analyst and writer about all aspects of trans people's experiences. I have been involved in the front line of dealing with trans people's problems and concerns, and promoting change, since I first started my self education attending domestic and international conferences in 1992/3. I joined Press for Change in that same year and, although I briefly took a step back because of work pressures in 2001 (returning to the fray in a new more compatible career a few months later), I have been in the forefront of change the rest of that time.

Workstream 4: Reducing health inequalities

Co-chairs:
Rachel Munton, Mental Health Act Commission, 
Kate Schneider, NIMHE South West

Rachel Munton is the Interim Deputy Chief Executive of the Mental Health Act Commission, seconded from her substantive post as Director of Mental Health Nursing for NIMHE. Before joining the MHAC, she led the national Black and minority ethnic mental health programme.

She is a former community psychiatric nurse, nurse manager and nurse educator; she worked at the University of Nottingham and in Leicester for the Health Action Zone before joining the Department of Health in March 2002.

Rachel did her RMN as a post registration student at the Bethlem Royal & Maudsley Hospitals [1983-1985], trained as an RGN in Nottingham [1979-1982], and was a nursing assistant in a psychiatric hospital before this, which ignited her interest in mental health and nursing.

Rachel's particular interests are in service user and carer involvement, women's mental health, and issues of race and equality.

Kate Schneider is Deputy Director and Senior Development consultant with the National Institute for Mental Health in England (South West), part of the Care Services Improvement Partnership.

In previous lives Kate has been a youth and community worker, editor, and nursing assistant. She has worked in the NHS for the past fifteen years in a range of roles including community health needs assessment; governance; and mental health practice development, service and policy development, and research.

Kate leads on the Mental Health Programme for NIMHE SW, and within that she has responsibility for workforce, women's mental health, personality disorder services, substance misuse, mental health for people with learning disabilities; knowledge management and communications.