Vicki Baxendale

Vicki Baxendale is a registered mental health nurse with nearly three decades of experience, having qualified in 1997 following completion of her Diploma in Nursing at Keele University. She has worked across a wide range of mental health settings as both a clinician and service manager, including acute inpatient care, community substance misuse services, community mental health teams, and Early Intervention in Psychosis (EIP). Her first formal leadership role was within EIP, where she developed a strong focus on quality improvement and meaningful service user engagement.

Since 2015, Vicki’s career has increasingly focused on quality, governance, and system‑level improvement. Her experience includes safeguarding system working, senior quality roles at divisional and trust level, and, prior to joining NHSE in 2024, serving as Deputy Chief Nurse at a Midlands mental health trust. In this role, she led on regulatory readiness, supported teams to deliver improvement plans, and helped demystify the CQC inspection process. She also played a key role in the development of the East Midlands Perinatal Provider Collaborative, leading on quality and service user engagement.

Vicki is a qualified Non‑Medical Prescriber, a registered Specialist Practitioner in Community Mental Health, and holds an MSc in Healthcare Leadership from the University of Birmingham. She has recently qualified as an Executive Coach.