Suffolk non-executive director appointed to merged mental health trust

An experienced and respected social services professional will join the Board of Norfolk and Suffolk’s joint mental health trust, after its inception on 1 January 2012.

Brian Parrott, a social worker by profession, has been officially appointed as a non-executive director of Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust, and the first newly appointed Board member from Suffolk.

Mr Parrott, who has shadowed the role at Norfolk and Waveney Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust for eight months, has played a key role in representing the interests of Suffolk Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust’s communities.

“I am really delighted to be joining the new Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust at its very beginning,” said Mr Parrott. “I look forward to helping build upon, and bring together, the good work done by both the Suffolk and Norfolk trusts in recent times.

“I am particularly pleased that the Maggie Wheeler, chair, has asked me to take a special interest in the care provided by the Trust in Great Yarmouth and Waveney, and especially in its learning disability services.’

Mr Parrott has a wealth of social services experience, working his way from assistant director to deputy director in 1985, before serving as a director in four local authorities. He has also been the chair of a Primary Care Trust and an interim non-executive director for Monitor, the foundation trust regulator.

Mr Parrott is taking a trip abroad in January 2012. He said: “When I committed to a trip to the Andes in South America I never expected that it would coincide with the launch of the new Trust!

“While regretting that I will be away for Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust’s first four weeks, I will catch up quickly on my return. I look forward to meeting with as many people as possible including service users, family carers and the range of professionals across the counties.”

Mr Parrott is chair of Suffolk Family Carers and both the Children and Adult Safeguarding Boards in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. Among his other accolades, Mr Parrott is co-chair of the nationwide Association of Directors of Adult Social Services Associates Network and a Trustee of the Kerrison Trust in Suffolk. He is also an Honorary Visiting Fellow at the University of East Anglia School of Social Work and Psychology.