Meet the team

Felicia Cox (chair)

Fiona Duncan

My background is in intensive care and hospice nursing in the UK and abroad. I am a nurse specialist in acute pain at Blackpool, and I am also a research fellow at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Helen Taylor

I have 17 years' experience of working in pain management, including developing and co-ordinating an acute pain service, working in chronic pain department and taking the lead in developing and running a pain management program.

I gained my experience in the NHS, Australia, Guernsey and Canada. I have been working for an independant providor of a primary care chronic pain service to the NHS in Nottingham for the last three years. I am also a honary tutor with the University of Wales.

I would like the forum to take the lead in informing and driving the development of local and national standards for pain management that provide equity of best evidence based care.

I believe that I have a great deal of experience and knowledge to offer on pain management including standards of care, staff and patient education & information.

I also have the enthusiasm and motiivation to become and remain actively involved in the forum. I would welcome the opportunity to develop personaly and professionaly and to access other people's experience and knowledge.

Mary Young

I have been working in specialist palliative care since 1994, in hospice and acute care settings. This has been in different roles - team leader, ward manager and clinical nurse specialist - therefore my experience, knowledge and skills are varied and have developed over this time.

I believe the forum needs to be proactive in enabling palliative care to be available to all client groups across all settings, to avoid the apparent ongoing "postcode lottery" of this service. This may be achieved by ongoing work with charitable and voluntary organisations to continue recruiting appropriate staff, finding new ways of working to fill gaps in the systems, using existing research to promote the need for clinical nurse specialists (CNS) posts, and working with the government to protect such services.

I believe that I can contribute enthusiasm,some level of knowledge and a willingness to participate in further projects to develop the forum and hence improved palliative care for users. This would also provide an opportunity for me to meet and work with colleagues and develop new skills.

Olwen Minford

Olwen’s experience has been working in the area of palliative and end of life care since 1997 in various capacities as a nurse, trainer and counsellor/psychotherapist. This has given her a strong foundation of skills and knowledge in relation to palliative care patients and their carers and their physical, emotional, spiritual, and social needs. Since 2007 she has worked as an end of life care facilitator within care homes and in the community of North and East London. These roles have given Olwen the opportunity to work strategically and to implement national end of life care tools e.g. Gold Standard Frameworks, Liverpool Care Pathway and Advance Care Planning.

Olwen is committed to the aims of the government's end of life care strategy(2008) and would wish to increase choice for all through improving communication and advance care planning, ensuring that people achieve their prefered place of care and die at home if they wish. Care after death requires a special focus and in the next four years, as an experienced bereavement counsellor, she would like the forum to raise awareness of how to deal with bereaved children .

Olwen contributes extensive experience as a nurse, trainer and psychotherapist from a broad range of settings and countries (UK, Australia, Israel, Hong Kong, South Africa) and a practical common sense approach mixed with passion and determination to improve services for those nearing the end of their lives. She wishes to develop and improve the standards of generalist end of life care in all settings and help people live well until they die.

Karen Williams

My background is varied which was a deliberate plan to cover as many specialities as possible, to get a good understanding of disease, its progression and human resiliance. Having worked in the acute sector as a senior sister in a medical admissions unit I believe that palliative care can be delievered anywhere.

While it is easier to provide palliative care in the protective confines of the hospice, it is far harder to deliver care in areas of huge turnover and conflicting pressures and priorities.

As a forum I want us to lraise awareness of new developments and best practice. I am particularly interested in looking at pain in older people and those with reduced cognition.