Melvyn Ingleson
Keen to make a difference to improving the health & wellbeing of individuals and families locally, Melvyn joined us as our Chair on April 1st 2023. He served as a non-executive director of Spectrum Community Health, a major social enterprise, a provider of prison health care and other health services across the North of England, based in Wakefield, for 5.5 years until October 2025. He is a trustee of The Cellar Trust, a fast growing mental health charity in Bradford. He is also a school governor, the Heights Federation in Kirklees.
Melvyn enjoyed many years running his own advisory firm from Glasgow, serving as an interface between private companies in many different sectors who needed to build relationships or sell services to government or the UK public sector. He retired in 2019, returning to Yorkshire.
He has a long standing professional interest in partnership working, including good governance, and in organisational transformation, enabled by digital technologies. His personal interests include theatre, cinema, live music of all kinds, gardening, the outdoors and local heritage.
Nick Whittingham
Nick is Chief Executive of Kirklees Citizens Advice & Law Centre, one of the organisations which founded Healthwatch Kirklees, and has been a Healthwatch Kirklees trustee and Treasurer since 2015.
Nick is an equality lawyer with a strong focus on enforcing the rights of people with disabilities and other protected characteristics. This extends to ensuring equity in access to and quality of service from our health and social care services. Nick also has direct experience of supporting NHS complaints work.
Nick brings to the Board experience of running a large local charity as well as Board experience across a range of national and local charity, community and environmental organisations.
His personal interests include environmental activism, supporting community events, live music and festivals.
Suzi Henderson
Suzi has worked in the advocacy sector for 20 years, starting her career in Kirklees as a mental health advocate. Prior to this, she trained as a social worker and worked in domestic abuse services. She is now the Chief Executive Officer of Cloverleaf Advocacy, a charity working across the North of England, with services in Calderdale and Kirklees. She is passionate about the voices, rights and choices of people drawing on health and social care services and has a strong commitment to inclusion for all. She is also a trustee for a local scouting group, and enjoys spending time with her two sons and dog (preferably at the coast!).
Tony Wilkinson
Tony has spent his career in retail pharmacy with Boots, an opportunity from his volunteer role with CAB created an enthusiasm for
public involvement within the NHS. This continued when he retired to Halifax, and led to his current Trustee activity with Healthwatch.
Developing an understanding of the Charity world and the labyrinth of the NHS and of Social Care Services has been a satisfying challenge for Tony. His admiration for the NHS and social care, from both a professional and family perspective has steadily increased.
Tony finds that facilitating public involvement, in even the smallest way, to achieve the best outcomes is why he continues volunteering his time.
Tony is also a Governor of the local hospital Trust, a Patient Panel member of the local GP practice, a bridge player, DIY enthusiast and proud relative of some grand children.
He would encourage others to “dip a toe in and add their voice”!
Yasmeen Sharif
Yasmeen has 25 years working in the voluntary sector with both children, young people, adults and families as a social care professional, service manager, national programme manager and strategic programme lead. She has held several health and social care leadership roles within Barnardo’s Children’s Services Operations and Children’s Services Development and Innovation Directorates.
Yasmeen was previously one of the founding trustees for Healthwatch Kirklees and Calderdale from 2015 to 2019. She has taken up this role again from June 2023.
Yasmeen since August 2022 is the Strategic Programme Lead for Barnardo’s West Yorkshire Keyworker Service delivering keyworking provision to children and young people who are autistic and or have a learning disability.
Yasmeen is also the West Yorkshire Mental Health Learning Disability Autism Programme Senior Responsible Officer for the Third Sector for children and young people. Yasmeen is passionate about working with children, young people, adults and families who can often feel unheard and devalued to receive health and social care services they need, when they need them as well as working collaboratively and developing innovative partnerships with diverse communities/organisations and supporting the third sector to be recognised, valued and heard.
Hilary Thompson
Hilary is a chartered accountant and management consultant, most recently working for the NHS at NHS North of England Commissioning Support, where she was joint head of the Yorkshire and Humber Consultancy team until October 2025.
For more than 30 years, Hilary has been delivering finance and other consultancy services to organisations in many sectors, both in the UK and overseas. Originally working in the private sector with EY, subsequently, Hilary has worked directly for the NHS for over eight years.
At the end of 2023 when she reduced her working days from five to four, Hilary looked for local volunteering opportunities in Kirklees and found Healthwatch, becoming Treasurer and a Trustee.
On a personal level Hilary enjoys travel, her favourite being visiting various parts of Italy, and tending a somewhat challenging garden.
Rachel Horner
Rachel is the Chief Executive at Age UK Kirklees and Calderdale and truly cares about helping older people live vibrant, fulfilling lives, while also supporting their families and carers. She has been a Trustee with Healthwatch Kirklees and Healthwatch Calderdale for a year and believes that Healthwatch is a great platform for giving the public a voice and making sure services respond to what the community truly needs.
In her personal time, she loves spending quality time with her family, going out, and catching up with friends.
Chloe Harrison
Chloe lives in Huddersfield and is passionate about strengthening the public’s voice in improving health and social care. She believes involving people and listening to their experiences is crucial to develop effective and sustainable change.
After studying Law at the University of Manchester, Chloe has built extensive experience across the health and social care sector. She has worked within legal and policy teams at the General Medical Council. She has also worked within the policy and public affairs team at the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, focussing on patient safety and the impact of health decisions particularly on older people and disabled people. More recently Chloe has worked as a Senior Policy Adviser in the Department of Health and Social Care’s Learning Disability Health Inequalities team. Much of her work has focussed on the rights of disabled people, tackling health inequalities and ensuring that public services are accessible, inclusive and fair.Outside of work, Chloe enjoys being in the countryside and spending time walking with her partner and dog.
Farida Ali
Farida brings a wealth of experience from her voluntary work with the British Red Cross, the Institute of Cancer Research/RadNet PPI Advisory Group, as an Elected Governor for South West Yorkshire Partnership Teaching NHS Foundation Trust and as a Non-Executive Director with Safeena—the UK’s first Muslim cancer charity.
A cancer survivor herself, Farida is passionate about improving patient care, tackling health inequalities, and amplifying the voices of vulnerable people in our community. With a professional background in marketing and stakeholder engagement within the pharmaceutical and IT sectors, she brings strong strategic and partnership skills to the team.
Living in Kirklees, Farida has first-hand experience navigating local health and social care services and is committed to helping shape a more compassionate and inclusive system.
When she’s not championing better healthcare, you’ll find her reading, spending time with family, or hiking through the Yorkshire countryside.
Joseph Casey
Joseph has spent the last fifteen years working with NHS teams and universities across the UK, most recently as a Director of King’s Health Partners, which brings together three NHS trusts and a university in London. Joseph’s work has focused on health inequalities and population health, including building partnerships between community, voluntary and NHS organisations with researchers. Joseph has published on the importance of measuring and sharing outcomes that matter to patients, including patient reported outcome measures.
Joseph was born in Huddersfield, and is now raising a young family here. He has a family member with a profound learning disability, and has spent many years navigating the local health and social care system with his family. Joseph also chairs a local Learning Disability Carers Group.