Role: Chair of Trustees
Three generations of Guenever’s family have used mental health services and she has been a family carer. She has lived and worked in Suffolk for over forty years, and in her later years with Suffolk County Council, was involved in the development of services for people with mental ill health and learning disabilities.
During her retirement, she has been an elected governor of the Norfolk & Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust (NSFT) for six years, including Lead Governor for four years, where an important duty was to go out and about and represent the public’s views at the highest levels in the Trust. In this role of governor, she came to admire and value the role of the Suffolk User Forum in representing service users’ voices. Guenever is also an NSFT ‘hospital manager’ as specified in the Mental Health Act, and sits on panels to review detentions under the Act. She is passionate about the empowerment of service users’ and carers’ voices in decisions about their care, and the protection of people’s rights.
Guenever is a Fellow of the RSA (royal society for the encouragement of the arts), a retired Chartered Librarian and a retired Member of the Chartered Management Institute. You can find her @guenever on Twitter.