Helen Sands

I Qualified as an adult nurse in 1996 and went onto work on a busy general surgical unit.

After starting a family in 2002 I decided that working on a busy acute was not giving me the work life/ home life balance I needed and went onto become a Funded Nursing Care Assessor, within this role I was responsible for determining the FNC band an individual required to meet their nursing needs.

In 2006 following the Grogan vs Bexley NHS Care Trusts case I was appointed as a CHC assessor with the responsibility for assessing individuals against the CHC framework as well as assessing for FNC.

In 2010 I was promoted within the CHC team to the Safeguarding and Quality lead and worked in partnership with the local authority to monitor the quality and safety of care provided in care homes.

In 2018 the 4 Clinical commissioning Groups in Lincolnshire agreed to in-house the CHC service and I was appointed to support the transition from CSU to the CCG, taking the role as head of service in 2020 when the service was in-housed into the CCG.

Of my 29-year career in nursing 23 years of it has been working within CHC and FNC.