Claire Leenhouwers

Skills for Care is the strategic workforce development and planning body for adult social care in England. Claire Leenhouwers is one of two National Professional Leads for nursing at Skills for Care alongside her colleague Lucy Gillespie. As National Professional Leads Claire and Lucy are committed to developing and supporting the social care nursing workforce. Projects include the development of a national strategy to enable social care placements for nurses and nursing associates along with the development of a preceptorship offer to ensure newly qualified staff who opt to work in social care have the support they need to thrive.

Claire’s background is in mental health nursing and she has worked across community and inpatient settings specialising in Early Intervention in Psychosis. She has also worked in learning and development for her local authority delivering training across health and social care with a focus on adult mental health. Before working for Skills for Care she worked as a Senior Lecturer in Mental Health Nursing at the University of Wolverhampton leading at modular and programme level and with particular expertise in practice learning and developing social care placements.

Her commitment to mental health nursing and social care comes from her own lived experience as an unpaid carer. Claire is passionate about social care and the nursing role within it with an ambition to see social care nursing given greater parity of esteem within the nursing body as a whole.