Meet the CMHU team

Will Higham – Director of Community Mental Health Unit

Will has worked closely with colleagues in the policy and practice team to shape our response to the most exciting – and challenging – moment in our history of delivering services: the Community Mental Health Framework. The challenge for Rethink is learning how to deliver in a new kind of deep partnership with the community, the NHS, local authorities and others. Only by deep listening to what people say they need for their recovery and wellbeing and then leveraging the assets of the whole community can we meet the challenge and make the transformative change so needed and so overdue. Will has a background in coalition-building in charities like the Save the Children and the Prison Reform Trust. Contact Will about our place-based partnered working.

william.higham@rethink.org

Lucy Schonegevel – Associate Director of Policy and Practice

Lucy oversees the department responsible for elevating the voices of lived experience and diverse communities to influence system change and ensure it is delivered. The team regularly meet with the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England’s mental health teams to discuss national policy. They have also published a number of guides for ICSs and are partnering with six ICSs and five Provider Collaboratives to facilitate coproduction and involvement of people living with severe mental illness in the community and inpatient settings. Contact Lucy about our work on national mental health policy.

lucy.schonegevel@rethink.org

Beccy Wardle – Associate Director for ICB Partnerships

Beccy leads the ICB Partnerships division, which is responsible for managing long-term partnerships with Integrated Care Boards (ICBs), such as the Open Mental Health alliance in Somerset. The team also supports our place-based work nationally. Previously, Beccy acted as the programme lead for the Somerset Open Mental Health alliance of VCSE providers, developing the alliance and supporting all system players from NHS trusts to grassroots providers to mobilise effectively and deliver community mental health transformation. Our work is enabling community mental health transformation using our guiding principles of co-production, VCSE integration through alliance development, true and deep community engagement, and culture change. Contact Beccy about our ICB partnerships.

beccy.wardle@rethink.org

Alex Monks – Head of Programme Development

Alex leads Rethink Mental Illness’ Programme Development team, which delivers targeted projects on the implementation of specific aspects or Community Mental Health Transformation. The team also creates tools and frameworks and develops webinars based on national and local insights. Alex is an experienced facilitator and programme manager and has collaborated with a diverse range of organisations across the VCSE and public sectors on projects that improve the lives of people and communities. Contact Alex about our projects related to Community Mental Health Transformation, and about our resources and tools.

alex.monks@rethink.org

Lourdes Colclough – Head of Suicide Prevention

Lourdes leads on Rethink Mental Illness’s pioneering Suicide Prevention Programme in partnership with the North-West London Integrated Care Board.  With coproduction and experts by experience at its heart, this programme is based on alliance building and a social response to suicide prevention.  With a panel of experts by experience and experts by training, the programme has distributed over £500,000 in grants to smaller voluntary sector organisations, provided coproduced suicide awareness training to community organisations and NHS staff and produced a multi-agency suicide prevention plan through alliance work.  The programme was shortlisted for the Ideas Alliance Collective Power Award. Lourdes recently presented on coproduction and working with Experts by Experience at the National Suicide Prevention Conference. Her background is in counselling and psychotherapy. Contact Lourdes about our place-based work in North-West London and our national suicide prevention work.

lourdes.colclough@rethink.org

Sam Holmes – Head of Coproduction and Involvement

Sam Holmes – Head of Coproduction and Involvement Sam has been a member of Rethink's Policy and Practice team since 2017, leading on coproduction facilitation of whole system mental health transformation in different health and care partnerships. She is also the strategic lead for our work in Norfolk and Waveney ICB, working closely on developing a whole system framework for engagement, involvement and co-production – and effective lived experience influencing – for better mental health outcomes. She has wide experience of coproducing with different stakeholder groups and of creative and strategic development approaches from both the charity and business sectors. Contact Sam about our place-based work in Norfolk & Waveney and our national coproduction and involvement work.

samantha.holmes@rethink.org

Kaneez Shaid – Head of Community Engagement

Kaneez joined Rethink Mental Illness in April 2021. She also works at Citizens UK as their Head of Health Sector Organising. She was previously Chair of Citizens UK and the Living Wage Foundation where she led Britain’s largest civil alliance, representing over half a million people in 600 member institutions.  She has been actively involved in social justice campaigning work for over 20 years, trained in community organising and is committed to enabling others, facing injustice and struggle, to help build the world as it should be. Contact Kaneez about our community engagement work.

kaneez.shaid@rethink.org

Nicola Hall – Head of Community Mental Health Unit for Coventry & Warwickshire

Nicola leads on all of the Community Mental Health Unit work in Coventry and Warwickshire including coproduction, the VCSE Mental Health Alliance and being a strategic partner in the local Integrated Care System. Nicola trained initially as a Registered General Nurse in the 1980s and in social work in 2011. She has a long history working across the statutory and voluntary sectors in both children's and adult services, with specialisms in mental health, substance misuse, sexual violence, and domestic abuse. Contact Nicola about our work in Coventry and Warwickshire.

nicola.hall@rethink.org

Sarah Batty – Head of Community Mental Health Unit for Sheffield and Cheshire & Wirral

Sarah joined Rethink in May 2017 as a Service Manager working in South Yorkshire and Derby City, having worked in acute mental health services within the NHS for several years, supporting people with a mental illness and their carers. Sarah is currently working as the Head of the Community Mental Health Unit, covering Sheffield and Cheshire and Wirral and is responsible for the delivery of the Synergy Sheffield Mental Health Alliance and the Co-production work in Cheshire and Wirral. Contact Sarah about our place-based work in Sheffield, and in Cheshire and Wirral.

sarah.batty@rethink.org

Gary Newton – Head of Contracts, Delivery, and Collaboration for Open Mental Health Alliance, Somerset

Having worked in a wide range of roles in the health and social care sector for over 30 years, Gary now works as Head of Contracts, Delivery and Collaboration for the Open Mental Health alliance, Somerset. The alliance provides a solution to disjointed and siloed services that rarely reflected the needs of the individual nor offered a person-centred approach. Rethink Mental Illness is Lead Accountable Body of the alliance, which has seen contract delivery grow sevenfold in the past 4 years. Gary’s role covers relationship management, implementing clear performance measures and harnessing meaningful business intelligence data. Contact Gary about our place-based work in Somerset.

gary.newton@rethink.org

Stephen Ryder – Community Engagement Manager, North-East Lincolnshire Mental Health Alliance

Stephen is seconded to Rethink Mental Illness from Creating Positive Opportunity, a social enterprise which he helped found in 2005. His role for Rethink Mental Illness includes chairing the North-East Lincolnshire Mental Health Alliance, and sitting on the Mental Health Sector Network for the Humber and North Yorkshire Integrated Care Board. He is also on the Children and Young People’s Mental Health and Emotional Wellbeing Strategic Board. This work sits alongside being the Managing Director of Creating Positive Opportunity, where daily responsibilities include managing the organisation and business development. His passion for education as a way of reducing disadvantage and poverty to our local communities runs through everything that he and his team at Creating Positive Opportunity do. He sits on a number of mental health boards across North-East Lincolnshire. Contact Stephen about place-based work in North-East Lincolnshire.

stephen@mycpo.co.uk

Phil Warburton – Community Engagement Manager, Tower Hamlets Mental Health Alliance

Phil joined the CHMU in 2021 on secondment from Citizens UK where he works as a Community Organiser.  His work with CMHU brings together his Citizens experience of organising local organisations to win local change with his 15 year experience of leading local third sector mental health groups.   Phil’s work is based in Tower Hamlets in the East End of London – where he helps facilitate a 17 members Mental Health Alliance made up of local Third Sector organisations working in the mental health and wellbeing space.  The Alliance works in partnership with NHS and local authority partners in the design and delivery of local provision. Contact Phil about our place-based work in Tower Hamlets.

phil.warburton@citizensuk.org