Paul Stanton, Director of Board Development, NHS Clinical Governance Support Team
Paul Stanton is Director of Board Development within the NHS Clinical Governance Support Team (CGST). There, he leads a team of former Health Authority, Trust and voluntary sector CEOs. Initially this team worked with NHS Boards to promote effective clinical governance. In 2004/5 they developed the concept of ‘Integrated Governance’ to help NHS bodies to align all the domains of governance in the interests of safe and high quality care, cost-effectiveness and service reform within health organisations and across local health and social care communities. In 2006 he spent a year seconded to the DH as a Senior Adviser on Standards and Quality, working on new system regulation.
Before joining the CGST he was Director of the European Social Fund Unit at Anglia Polytechnic University (APU) and a member of the University’s Senior Management Team. He directed more than 30 European projects that helped disadvantaged communities and that promoted entrepreneurship and academic innovation. Previously, as an Associate Dean in the Faculty of Health at APU he was responsible for the strategic academic development of the Faculty and its trading business. As a principal lecturer in health and social care he worked as a professional educator at pre and post qualifying levels in the UK and overseas.
Initially trained in management in the private sector, he became Managing Director of the publishing subsidiary of a national print company before moving, in his late twenties, into public service. There, having qualified as a social worker, he worked as a mental health specialist in the Local Authority and voluntary sectors, spent periods of time working in a maximum security prison and in psychiatric units, before developing services for homeless people with mental health or substance abuse problems.
He was one of the UK’s two representatives to the European Society for Quality in Health and, in a voluntary capacity, was a trustee of housing associations and a past Chairman of the ‘Reason Partnership’ – an international charity providing help to people with mental health problems in the developing world.
He is a visiting Professor in the School of Health, Community Studies and Education at Northumbria University and co-founder of the award winning ‘Patient Voices’ programme. He has published on the themes of clinical and corporate governance, speaks widely at national conferences and runs ‘master classes’ in the UK and overseas on 21st century public services and upon the engagement of clinical professionals, patients and carers in quality and safety improvement.
