Professor Mike Cooke, Chief Executive of Nottinghamshire Healthcare, the County’s mental health and learning disability service provider, has been awarded a CBE for services to mental health in the Queen’s 2011 New Year’s Honours List.
Mike has worked in the NHS for 28 years in a variety of settings, including management roles at Reading and Salisbury Hospitals. He was Deputy CE of Huddersfield and CE at Halton General Hospital (1999-2001) where he commissioned new mental health facilities at Runcorn and Widnes and managed a merger with Warrington Hospital. This Trust is now Acute Trust of the year.
He joined Nottinghamshire Healthcare in 2007, from South Staffordshire and Shropshire Foundation Trust where he took the Trust to Foundation Trust of the Year. During the last three years he has led Nottinghamshire Healthcare through a period of development and growth, which has resulted in its recent achievement of Foundation Trust standard. Mike is an outstanding, innovative leader who inspires those around him to even higher levels of excellence.
Professor Clair Chilvers is the outgoing Chair of Nottinghamshire Healthcare: “Mike thoroughly deserves this recognition of his achievements, not only at Nottinghamshire Healthcare but in his outstanding career in the NHS. He is open about his own experience as a user of mental health services and this enables him to articulate very clearly what makes services good and respond to what people want. This has helped enormously in the development of our own anti stigma campaign work. I am confident that Mike will continue to develop and improve services for people with mental health or learning disability; because he is really passionate about what he does. This recognition is timely and a significant appreciation of his efforts.”
