Lee Baxter Email & Phone Number

I started my working life wanting to make a difference in people’s lives. I wanted to be a nurse and started out working in the care sector as a support worker in a care home. This was the very best grounding I could do prior to my Nurse training. I qualified as a Nurse in 1997 and began my career as a registered Adults Nurse. After some acute work in vascular surgery and then intensive care, I focused on community practice and in 2001 completed a degree and gained a specialist practitioner qualification in District Nursing.I worked for a few years as a DN in Devon.I later went into the field of professional practice for District Nursing. During restructuring in the local NHS system I was fortunate to get a promotion into operational management of community services - which has made up a significant part of my career both as a health and social care locality manager and as a Assistant director. The Covid19 pandemic was hard, unknown and an uncertain time. For many working in the health and social care sector it will remain a key moment in our careers - I believe I did the very best to lead and support my teams during this time and work effectively with partners to support as required.My latest move has built upon all the years of joint working across the NHS and Local Government, and I have now moved into a divisional Director role for adult social care in Torbay council.My basic principles remain; we should always be kind, remember that people are at the heart of all we do. That taking our time to think carefully to achieve the right outcomes for people is a good use of time. That it takes all types of leaders to make a strong leadership team.