Our Chair, Jacquie Wood
Jacquie is a registered nurse and nurse teacher and also a qualified Human Resources practitioner. She has worked extensively with several different NHS and care organisations for over 30 years at the local and regional levels. Jacquie’s primary expertise lies in developing organisations and their people to meet new challenges and make the changes needed to develop services.
Jacquie has experience working with local hospitals, community organisations, GP practices, health care commissioners and voluntary organisations with a view to improving patient services and supporting staff through change. Jacquie is now semi-retired but still works part-time with some local organisations on request.
Jacquie is passionate about the NHS, the quality of its services and good patient care for all age groups in all care settings. She is very much looking forward to working as part of the Healthwatch Oldham Board to help meet their key role in giving a voice to local people on care services.
Our Board
Issie Howard
Issie is a committed housing professional, having worked in the social housing sector for the last 16 years, and volunteered as a member of the Chartered Institute of Housing north west regional group since 2015.
She currently works as a Partnerships Manager for Housing 21, a leading, not for profit provider of Extra Care and Retirement Living for older people of modest means and is based in Oldham. She works in the PFI team, working alongside a range of partners including Oldham Council, making sure that residents have opportunities to engage and be involved in decision making and develop activities within the schemes and communities that Housing 21 manage.
Issie is interested in the link between health, housing and social care, and is passionate about these three areas not working in silos, but in harmony together. She has worked in Oldham for the last seven years and is very well connected to a network of different organisations, community groups and people. She believes having local insight is one of her strengths as a Healthwatch Oldham board member.
She holds an undergraduate degree from The University of Manchester and a masters degree in Housing Practice from the University of Salford.
Julie Wooton
Julie began her career over 35 years ago as an ophthalmic and paediatric nurse, she made the successful transition from executive nurse into corporate management, which spanned across all directorates at board and director positions in the UK, UAE and Asia. Within this time she was involved in a number of international symposiums regarding the rights of children.
Over the past 10 years her experiences have largely included redesigning services to increase access for patients, and what is it that we need to do differently to improve patient services. She is a Practice Partner In Oldham and with her team strives to continually improve the quality of services, how our patients access them and how we communicate better with our patients.
Julie’s heart lies in supporting the community and giving a voice to local people. Being a board member is quite a privilege and she is looking forward to utilise her experiences to support colleagues and the Oldham community to make a difference.
