Rita Araújo

Ensuring positive outcomes for Families in a cost efficient approach | Award winning Programme Lead - LGC and HSJ awards | Transformational Leadership & Change | Proven record of partnership working across Health, Local Authority, Voluntary Sector and Education | Data driven | QI methodology | Clinical, Research, Management, Programme and Commissioning experience

I have always been passionate about ensuring the wellbeing and safeguarding of CYP/families and this has subsequently informed my personal and professional development. During my Nursing experience I rapidly progressed into taking charge of demanding units and was closely involved in improving service delivery through continuing Quality Improvement (QI) projects as a clinician/manager, project manager. Parallel to this I formally studied Improvement Science and Transformation Methodologies during the Masters degree undertaken at Imperial College London as well as through a PG cert. All this has resulted in presenting at a number of national/ international conferences to share the innovative projects and lecturing at Imperial College London since 2015.

Programmes I have been leading have been awarded best Public Health Porgramme LGC awards; Best Paediatric Initiative HSJ Value awards; Best COVID-19 response HSJ Partnership awards and Highly Commended Primary Care initiative HSJ awards. The work has been presented at a number of national and international conferences.

I was also the founder and co-chair of the NEL CYP Asthma network that has translated in increasing workforce from 1 to 8 permanent specialist nurses and is year upon year improving the outcomes for CYP. The model I developed with a number of partners is currently being replicated across the country.

My current position involves offering strategic and leadership to the CYP, Maternity and LD Sussex agenda. This has already translated in a review of all CYP services in the region, having been extremely well received by system stakeholders.

As an independent consultant, I was part of a group that developed and refined a child rights toolkit for use within primary care settings in the European Union that counted with several members of WHO Europe.

Within my volunteering capacity, I used a number of methodologies to better respond to the needs of the vulnerable group of children living in the Refugee Camp in Calais, France. I have been actively leading a number of UNICEF related campaigns as a volunteer focusing on the importance of family reunification, climate change and immunistation.