Welcome to our new trustees
23rd September 2024
Helpforce has always attracted extraordinarily talented and experienced trustees and staff. We’re delighted that this continues to be true and today we welcome three new trustees. Penelope, Richard and Sara bring exceptional experience and influence in the fields of integrated care, health and social care policy and practice, and the charity sector: all central to Helpforce’s continued success in achieving our mission.
A warm welcome to our three new trustees. We’re thrilled to have attracted such an impressive trio, ideally positioned to support Helpforce to optimise the impact volunteering can have on people’s health within the NHS and in the community.
Penelope Green
Penelope is an independent consultant in policy, strategy and external affairs, specialising in health and social care policy.
She has 18 years’ experience working for national government, including 15 years in the Department of Health and Social Care, latterly specialising in social care and supported housing policy, and leading engagement with NHS England on integrated health and care policy, including the Better Care Fund.
“I am delighted to be joining the Helpforce team. I volunteer regularly in supported housing and have found the experience enormously rewarding and educational. There is huge scope for volunteering to improve the experience of staff and people accessing care – but I recognise the challenge in efficiently unlocking the potential of a volunteer workforce at scale.
“The analytical capability and wealth of data generated by Helpforce is an exciting offer to the sector, and I’m looking forward to working with the team to expand the reach and impact of its work.”
Richard Lewis
Richard is a strategy consultant and evaluator who specialises in the health and care sector. He has published and researched about integrated care for nearly 30 years, including co-leading the national evaluation of integrated care pilots for the, then, Department of Health. He is a Visiting Senior Fellow at the Nuffield Trust, a trustee of Bart’s Charity and a non-executive director of THIS Labs.
Richard’s background includes time spent seconded to government, including supporting the primary and community care elements of Lord Darzi’s previous NHS review in 2008. He began his career in the NHS and, until 2018, was a partner at Ernst & Young LLP, leading their health advisory practice in the UK and Ireland.
“I am particularly looking forward to supporting Helpforce in its mission to realise the potential for volunteering to benefit individuals (volunteers and service recipients), develop social capital and contribute to the wider determinants of health, for example, by providing routes to employment.
“During the Covid-19 emergency, the widespread volunteering response was perhaps one of the few positive experiences of an otherwise negative situation. Although volunteering nationally has since experienced challenges, organisations like Helpforce are ideally placed to help turn this around.”
Sara Siegel
Sara is Global Health Sector Leader at Deloitte, leading their health practice in the UK. Sara’s passion for health began when she moved to the UK in 2003 and was first exposed to the NHS.
She believes passionately in its mission and, with her teams, supports the NHS to do more and better with the resources at its disposal. Sara’s work includes supporting the government on its Coronavirus testing programme, and the introduction of robotic and cognitive automation to improve the speed and quality of NHS services and to release more time for direct patient care.
Sara is a trustee of the Peter Sowerby Foundation, which supports healthcare causes, and the Conservation Collective, an environmental charity that promotes local teams working to solve environmental problems.
“It’s great to be joining the team, building on my previous involvement with Helpforce. In my role as head of health at Deloitte, we supported Helpforce in a pro bono capacity for about two years. I have watched Helpforce’s growth with great interest and think its mission is exactly right - we need to do more with NHS volunteers. This will help our NHS providers and create a more fulfilling experience for volunteers.
“It is an organisation with so much to offer, and I’m pleased that my ‘day job’ will offer a lot of synergies to the Helpforce team and direction.”