South Wales Osteopathic Society

Friday, 06 February 2009

The General Osteopathic Council (GOsC) welcomes the Appointments Commission’s agreement in principle to appoint 13 new members to its reconstituted Council, following an independent recruitment campaign conducted by the Appointments Commission.

The new Council members will take office on 1 April 2009, subject to the General Osteopathic Council (Constitution) Order 2009 coming into force and will operate under the leadership of the Chair.  Transitional arrangements under this Order set out that the person who is Chair on 31 March 2009 will be reappointed for 4 years.   

The current GOsC Chairman, Professor Eddleston, commented on the announcement:

“I am very pleased that this process, which has selected candidates against well-defined competencies, has enabled us to appoint such an excellent mix of talented people, both lay and registrant, to form the new General Osteopathic Council.  I am particularly grateful to the members of the present Council for their hard work in creating such a strong regulatory environment for osteopathy, and for their enthusiasm and commitment which has done so much to ensure a most promising future for the GOsC." 

The new Council Members are:

Lay Members

· John Chuter OBE (to be recommended as Treasurer to the Council on
10 March 2009)

· Geraldine Campbell

· Professor Ian Hughes

· Kim Lavely

· Professor Julie Stone

· Jenny White MBE

Osteopath Members

· Paula Cook

· Jonathan Hearsey

· Nicholas Hounsfield

· Brian McKenna

· Kenneth McLean

· Robin Shepherd

· Fiona Walsh

The Council provides the strategic direction that ensures the GOsC fulfils its statutory functions and retains the trust and confidence of registrants, patients and the public.  All appointments were approved by the Appointments Commission’s Health and Social Care Appointments Committee.  All appointments are made on merit following a fair, open and transparent recruitment and selection process.

Biographies of new Council Members:

Lay members
John Chuter is a member of the current Council and Treasurer of the GOsC.  He is also Chairman of the Bradford & Airedale Teaching Primary Care Trust and, before that, was the Chairman and a Non-Executive Director of the Bradford District Care Trust.  Previously he spent most of his working life in the defence logistics arena as a Commissioned Officer.

Geraldine Campbell is a member of the current GOsC Council.  She is also a Lay Chair within the Health and Personal Social Services Complaints Procedure of the Eastern and Southern Health and Social Services Boards, Northern Ireland; a member of the Northern Ireland Social Care Council; and a consumer engagement advisor to the Food Standards Agency.  In addition, Geraldine is a Trustee of Citizen’s Advice Belfast; a former Trustee of the National AIDS Trust London; and Chief Executive of the HIV Support Centre, Belfast.

Professor Ian Hughes is a member of the current GOsC Council.  His other current appointments include work with the Judicial Appointments Commission, the General Social Care Council, the Bar Council, the Richmond Fellowship and the Biobank Ethics and Governance Council.  He is Professor of Pharmacology Education, Faculty of Biological Sciences, University of Leeds and Chairman of the Leeds Partnership NHS Foundation Trust.

Kim Lavely is an independent consultant.  Until September 2008, she was Chief Executive at The Prince’s Foundation for Integrated Health.  Before that she was Deputy Chief Executive of the Consumers’ Association, which she joined in 1988.  She has served on a number of boards, including those of the Charities Aid Foundation and Consumers International.

Professor Julie Stone is an independent consultant in Healthcare Ethics and Law and visiting Professor in Ethics at the Peninsula Medical School.  She has a range of current appointments, including: non-executive director of NHS Cornwall and Isles of Scilly; member of the Advisory Board on the Registration of Homeopathic Products; and senior consultant to Political Intelligence, a public affairs consultancy.  In addition she is a member of the British Psychological Society Ethics Committee, the Clinical Disputes Forum, and the Governing Body of the Institute of Medical Ethics.  Recent former appointments have included: Deputy Director of the Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence, where she led a Department of Health-funded project on maintaining sexual boundaries; Advisor to the Department of Health Steering Group on the Statutory Regulation of Practitioners of Acupuncture, Herbal Medicine and Traditional Chinese Medicine; and Advisor to the Kerr/Haslam Inquiry.  She is the author of the ‘Stone Report on a Federal Voluntary Structure for Regulation of CAM’.

Jenny White is a non-practising barrister with broad experience in the public, regulatory and voluntary sectors.  She is a member of the current GOsC Council.  She holds other positions with the Centre for Accessible Environments, the Employers’ Forum on Disability, and the East London and City NHS Research Ethics Committee.  In the past she has held posts with the Disability Rights Commission, the Electricity Association, Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID), the National Disability Council, the Electricity Council, the British Steel Corporation and the Department of Employment.  She is an accredited mediator and member of the RSA, the Royal Society of Medicine, the Medico-Legal Society and the Discrimination Law Association, Clarity.

Osteopath members
Paula Cook qualified as an osteopath in June 2008.  Previously, she was a partner at Bacon & Woodrow and has held appointments in the human resources field for Hewitt Associates, Coopers & Lybrand, Bromley Hospitals NHS Trust and the South East Thames Regional Health Authority.  She was a Non-Executive Director at the Crawley and Horsham NHS Trust, and currently holds a public appointment for the Department of Justice.

Jonathan Hearsey graduated from the European School of Osteopathy (ESO) in 1994.  He has a private osteopathic practice and runs a team of osteopaths on behalf of West Sussex Primary Care Trust, both in multidisciplinary and in-house formats.  Jonathan is a member of the ESO’s teaching faculty and previously taught and examined in the ESO’s undergraduate programme and held management positions in the teaching clinic and international department.  He lectures to postgraduate physiotherapists and medical doctors in Norway, Spain, France and Russia.

Nick Hounsfield qualified as an osteopath in 1997.  He has opened a multidisciplinary health practice in Bristol with three members of his family who are also osteopaths.  His special interests are the treatment of children and research into the treatment of cystic fibrosis.  He also works in a GP practice in Bristol, where he has been conducting research into the provision of osteopathy in the NHS.  He is Chairman of the very active Western Counties Society of Osteopaths and belongs to the GOsC Regional Communications network.

Brian McKenna lives and works in Cardiff.  Brian was formerly the elected member for Wales on the GOsC Council and is also a committee member of the South Wales Osteopathic Society (SWOS) where he assists other members in providing Continuing Professional Development, support and lobbying for the funding of osteopathy by the NHS.  He is a partner in a general osteopathic practice and has a special interest in paediatrics and shoulder dysfunction.  He also has an interest in data collection and clinical audit and sees the benefits this brings to his own practice and the potential benefits for the profession.  He is currently following the post-graduate Sutherland Cranial College (SCC) pathway.

Kenneth McLean lives and practises in North Berwick, Scotland.  Prior to returning to Scotland in 2008, he worked at the Penn Clinic in Hatfield and ran a private practice in London.  Before qualifying as an osteopath, Kenneth worked in the voluntary sector for the National Autistic Society and in the commercial sector for the Laporte Group, based in England and The Netherlands.  He speaks several European languages and is fluent in French and Dutch.  He is also involved in a voluntary capacity with the emergency and lifesaving response team First Responders in North Berwick.

Robin Shepherd has been in both private and NHS employed osteopathic practice since qualifying in 1990.  He is additionally trained as an ‘Expert Witness’ offering medical report writing and mediation services.  Robin has been a board member of the GOsC since 2002 and is currently acting chairman.  Previous positions include part-time funded osteopath for the NHS, pain clinician at Addenbrookes Hospital Cambridge and Consultant Adviser to Boots the Chemist.  For eight years he taught osteopathy at an undergraduate level and has since run post-graduate training courses associated with osteopathy.  Mr. Shepherd has chaired and spoken at numerous osteopathic events, presented at national medical conferences and published a number of papers in professional journals.

Fiona Walsh is a member of the current GOsC Council.  She was closely involved in the transition of osteopathy from voluntary to statutory regulation.  She has both private and NHS practices and also undertakes a number of academic and clinical teaching roles, both at home and abroad.

ENDS

For further information, please contact:
The GOsC Press Office
Tel: 020 7357 6655 ext. 245
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Notes to editors

1.       Terms of Office:  It is expected that GOsC Council appointments will be formalised as soon as the General Osteopathic Council (Constitution) Order 2009 is enacted.  The appointments will be for terms of either three or four years, as from 1 April 2009.  Refer to the table in point 4 below for further information regarding individual members’ terms. 

2.       Remuneration:

Chair of the Council                 £22,000 per annum
Treasurer                                 £11,500 per annum
Council Members                    £6,500 per annum

3.       Political Activity:  All appointments are made on merit and political activity plays no part in the selection process.  However, in accordance with the original Nolan recommendations, there is a requirement for appointees’ political activity (if any declared) to be made public.  No member declared any political activity in the past five years.

4.       GOsC term of office and other appointments current at February 2009: