Meet our new My Home Life England Development Board
As we move into our 15th year, the My Home Life movement remains a strong and connected network working towards our vision of a world where all care homes for older people are great places to live, die, visit and work. Now supported by the My Home Life charity, we are working in 6 countries crossing 2 continents. The team at My Home Life England continue to be hosted and supported by City, University of London.
As well as the support we receive through the My Home Life network, through our colleagues across social and health care and through City, University of London, My Home Life England has recently been able to appoint some great new people to join our new Development Board, building on our previous interim arrangements.
We felt very fortunate that our invitation for people to join us generated so much interest. It was a difficult decision, but we are delighted to have been able to appoint three excellent and well-qualified new board members:
Blesson Thomas
A graduate of the My Home Life Professional Development and Support programme, Blesson manages an outstanding home for Fremantle Trust. Blesson came to the UK as a qualified nurse in India, moving into social care and eventually a registered manager. Outside of work Blesson has held national leadership roles within his church.
Catherine Holmes
Catherine works for a care home provider with national responsibility for lots of different areas including quality, focused support for people who have dementia, new projects and change programmes. Prior to working for Anchor, Catherine worked for business link as a regional leader, offering advice and support for small and medium sized businesses.
Sheila Sorby
Sheila joins the board whilst working as Associate Director of Nursing and Clinical for Leeds Community Healthcare NHS trust, having worked as a nurse for over 25 years in a number of different settings. Throughout her career Sheila has worked alongside care homes, supporting projects relating to nursing in social care and collaborative approaches to learning together. Sheila brings personal and professional experience of care homes to the board.
Blesson, Catherine and Shelia join Nick Acland and Paul Burstow who formed part of our interim advisory board, as well as Professor Janet Anderson who has joined City, University of London as Professor of Quality of Care for Older People and is working as part of the My Home Life England team as our new research lead.