Regional board

Janet Mortimer - Northern Board Vice Chair

Janet Mortimer is a clinical nurse specialist who believes in the NHS and that patient care should be a nurse’s first priority. She specialises in dementia and delirium. Working with and alongside colleagues from other disciplines within the trust. Janet is also an active member of the RCN, for the last three years participating in the Northern Board, utilising her positive attitude and tireless energy to encourage others to work hard and succeed, hoping she has inspired others.

Michael Appleby - RCN Council member

Michael currently works as the Mental Capacity Act Lead Nurse at County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust and before that worked as a professional nurse teaching fellow. He worked for many years in the community as a nurse. Michael has worked within the NHS for over 35 years, starting as a healthcare assistant before qualifying as a nurse in 2002.

Michael is very active within the RCN and has held positions as the Chair of the Northern Board and Chair of County Durham and Darlington Branch. He has also held national seats for the Northern region on the RCN’s Trade Union Committee and the UK Stewards Committee. 

Tim Grace - Professional Nursing Committee member

Tim Grace works in the leadership team of a community mental health service as a psychological therapist. An independent prescriber and a specialist mindfulness based cognitive therapy practitioner, his main professional interests relate to working with people with voice-hearing experiences, service development, teaching, supervision and research. 

He provides clinical supervision for a range of professionals and has supervised postgraduate students. Tim also works together with people with lived experience of mental health problems, developing workshops, delivering training to staff, and working on service development. The clinical leadership aspect of his role allows him to influence patient care across services while retaining the individual clinical work that he enjoys.

The RCN has been a part of Tim’s professional life for most of his career, which included a 15-month secondment with the College. He finds being on the Northern Board and the RCN Professional Nursing Committee very rewarding.

Roaqah Shaher - Trade Union Committee member

Roaqah has worked for South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in Middlesbrough since she qualified as an adult nurse in 2004. She is currently a clinical sister in the Cardiothoracic High Dependency Unit and also has experience as a ward manager in general medicine.

Roaqah was accredited as a RCN steward in 2007 and joined the Joint Partnership Committee soon after in 2008. After being elected to Vice Chair of the Staff Side Committee for two years, she was elected to Staff Side Chair in 2015 and has remained in that position since. Within the RCN Tees Valley Branch she has held the positions of vice chair and secretary. She has been the treasurer of the branch for the last three years.

Jill Gale

Jill Gale has been a steward in the Tees Valley Branch since 2002. She sits on the RCN Northern Board and has served as the secretary of the Tees Valley Branch from 2012-16. She is a Specialist Practitioner / District Nursing Sister with the South Tees Community Nursing Out of Hours Team. She provides palliative and end-of-life care, providing overnight care to patients who wish to remain at home to die, supporting both patients and their families.

Lynda High

Lynda High is the treasurer of the Cumbria Branch. She is currently working on the bank having recently retired as a health care assistant with Millom District Nurses, where she had worked since 2005. She's been an RCN member since 2011, and did her safety rep training in 2013. She is currently serving my second term on the Northern Board. She has previously served a two-year term on the Nursing Support Workers Committee, formerly known as the Health Practitioners Committee at the time, which she really enjoyed. 

Andrew Moore

Andrew became an RCN Northern Board member in 2020 after being elected to represent members in the region. He is currently the treasurer for the Northumberland, Tyne and Wear branch along with being an active steward involved in case work with members and promoting the RCN in the workplace. He has 11 years' experience in the NHS, initially working in the community delivering care in patients’ houses. He is currently a full-time nurse assessor for Gateshead / Newcastle CCG. He is passionate about his board and steward work, recognising the importance of professional nursing work, and is determined to do everything in his power to help to deliver an improved pay deal for nursing staff.

Claire Reynolds

Claire is a learning disability nurse with 25 years’ experience. She began her career as a volunteer in a local long-stay hospital. She loves learning and supporting others to learn new skills and knowledge. 

Claire has been active within the RCN for a number of years and is currently a learning representative, as well as being County Durham and Darlington branch secretary, a Northern Board member and the vice chair of the UK Learning Representatives Committee. She finds these roles very rewarding and they give her an understanding of how she can support members in their roles.

Mark Tull

Mark Tull has been a registered mental health nurse for almost thirty years and an RCN representative for 25 years. He trained as a cognitive behavioural therapist at Newcastle University 10 years ago and for the past five years has been managing and leading a team of psychological therapists based in central Gateshead. He has a very strong interest in staff wellbeing and promotes meaningful initiatives at all levels in his various representational roles. Being an RCN representative and a member of the RCN Northern Board allows him to highlight, promote and bring to debate issues for the benefit of our members. 

Steven Yull

Steven Yull is Chair of the Tees Valley Branch, an RCN health and safety representative and a member of the RCN Northern Board. 

Born in Middlesbrough, he trained in adult nursing at Teesside University. He has worked in intermediate care, community nursing, clinical education and he is currently a people development practitioner at North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust.