Job summary
Are you a positive role model for innovation in excellent patient care? If you are, come and join us at Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust to take patient experience to the next level. We are looking for an exceptional operational leader to work within our divisional team across Specialised, Secure and CAMHS (SSC) services.
The role comes at a time when we have the opportunity to design, implement and embed excellence in mental health, learning disability and neurodiversity care services. As the Divisional Director of Operations you will have the autonomy to lead and work alongside the transformation team at the heart of improving services across both inpatient and community settings, working with service users and carers, and developing new roles and opportunities for staff.
SSC cover a wide portfolio of services including inpatient services for eating disorders, mother and baby, medium and low secure and Tier 4 CAMHS, with a specialist learning disability and autism service due to open early next year. We also have CAMHS community services, and a number of specialist community services which include supporting people with neurodevelopmental issues, prison mental health issues, gambling harms and veterans.
Main duties of the job
The Divisional Director of Operations is responsible for the smooth running of services including the development and maintenance of strong relationships and partnerships with commissioners and other stakeholders, business development, business intelligence, management of budgets, resources and assets, financial sustainability, performance, integrated governance, administrative support and other support to the Division.
Working within the Divisional Team, the Divisional Director of Operations ensures a culture and ethos of quality is embedded in all aspects of service design, implementation, delivery and review.
The postholder will contribute to the strategic leadership of the services in line with the Trust Strategy and Annual Operating Plan, engaging in a process of continuous improvement in service delivery, innovation, and business development.
The post-holder will be responsible for key operational areas and performance management arrangements in the pursuance of the delivery of clinically effective and efficient services. A commitment to system working is key for this role.
About us
We are AWP (Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust) a diverse organisation with over 5,000 dedicated staff providing inpatient and community-based mental health care.
We provide services from a range of locations to approximately 1.8 million people living in Bath and North East Somerset (B&NES), Bristol, North Somerset, South Gloucestershire, Swindon, across the county of Wiltshire and in parts of Dorset.
We are passionate about promoting good mental health and wellbeing. Our staff are pivotal in everything we do and we are committed to involving them fully in the development of the Trust and our services. We are proud to be fostering a diverse workforce that reflects our communities. A key commitment to this is improving staff representation from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities, those from the LGBTQ+ communities, and people living with disabilities - we are a 'Disability Confident Employer' offering a guaranteed interview to Disabled applicants who meet the essential criteria.
Job description
Job responsibilities
1. People leadership and management
- Provide inclusive, compassionate and effective leadership for your team by setting clear vision and direction.
- Develop a culture and environment in which members of staff are encouraged and supported to deliver high- quality services and are supported to innovate and improve services where appropriate.
- Encourage your team to feel able to raise concerns openly and safely.
- Promote equality of opportunity in service delivery and employment, ensuring that no person receives less favourable treatment than another on the grounds of gender, marital status, race, religion, creed, colour nationality ethnic or national origin, sexual orientation or disability.
- Support prompt recruitment by identifying vacancies to the AWP Recruitment Team as soon as they arise, and participate in the selection and effective induction and onboarding of new joiners to the team.
- Ensure that all team members have a very positive introduction to the team and a well-supported first year.
- Take responsibility for encouraging people to stay with AWP, ensuring that you are aware whenever a member of your team is considering leaving, seeking to understand their reasons and encouraging them to stay.
- Ensure that key messages are cascaded in your team and that your team are encouraged to put forward suggestions.
- Show appreciation to your team when they do good work and support them when they are struggling.
- Consider the individual needs of team members for a healthy work-life balance and think about how their needs can be supported by providing flexible ways of working.
- Support all team members to keep their mandatory and statutory training up-to-date and identify the learning and development needs of all team members of the team ensuring that everyone has an up-to-date personal development plan (PDP).
- Ensure that every team member as at least an hour of supervision (one-to-one meeting) each month, this may include both managerial and clinical supervision.
- Ensure all team members receive a constructive assessment of their performance each year and set SMART objectives for the coming year.
- Seek support from the HR Team to tackle any worries regarding matters of discipline, including both conduct and capability concerns, supporting a just and restorative culture. Take prompt action regarding serious concerns and ensure clear plans are in place for problems which are less serious in nature but prove difficult to resolve.
- Act as a positive role model at all times, encouraging people to feel equal members of the team whilst working within clear frameworks and policies.
- Promote effective use of bank and agency nursing staff, providing a safe and effective service, complying with regulatory standards.
2. Performance and information management
- Ensure that you and your team understand all of the agreed key performance indicators for your service, particularly relating to outcomes and essential standards to be met.
- Ensure that you and your team understand data quality standards and that all the necessary records for your service are maintained and reported.
- Ensure that you and your team understand all of the clinical and business action plans relevant to your services.
- Ensure that you and your team understand all of the monitoring, auditing and reporting systems relevant to your services.
3. Service development and planning
- Actively seek opportunities for improvement for the services which you and your team provide by identifying research evidence and best practice elsewhere, interpreting/translating and facilitating adaptation for AWP.
- Analyse and interpret data to inform the strategic direction of the services which you and your team provide
- Ensure multidisciplinary involvement and the use of quality improvement (QI) techniques in service improvement, by negotiating shared solutions, facilitating the resolution of complex or contentious issues and managing any conflict into constructive outcomes.
- Ensure effective risk identification, analysis, mitigation and management within your services, encouraging all members of your team to be aware of and to manage risks.
4. Governance and policy
- Ensure that you understand all of the key governance requirements, policies and standards for your services and that these are communicated to your team; make sure your team understand the importance of good governance.
- Support the development of policies relevant to your services, including your team in this work.
5. Financial and resource management
- Monitor and exercise appropriate control over the budget(s) for your team, ensuring that both you and your team understand the resources available to support provision of a high quality and cost-effective service.
- Challenge and manage poor financial management and poor use of any resources.
5.3 Ensure optimum use of people and other resources; particularly though emphasizing use of substantive staffing and effective use of bank and agency staff.
- Ensure that whenever you authorise expenditure you are thoughtful and careful about whether there could be a more cost-effective solution.
- Ensure that your use of resources is in accordance with AWP Standing Orders and Standing Financial Instructions.
6. Stakeholder involvement
- Ensure that you are aware of the many stakeholders to your services (your key stakeholders will include all members of your multi-disciplinary team, other teams, service users, families, carers, local communities, other statutory agencies, other healthcare providers etc.
- Develop and maintain positive relationships with your key stakeholders, this may include proactive communications to ensure full involvement and engagement in the delivery of services and aims and objectives.
Implement and lead effective two-way communications to ensure that the Service areas are responsive to the needs of patients/service users and external pressures.
Job description
Job responsibilities
1. People leadership and management
- Provide inclusive, compassionate and effective leadership for your team by setting clear vision and direction.
- Develop a culture and environment in which members of staff are encouraged and supported to deliver high- quality services and are supported to innovate and improve services where appropriate.
- Encourage your team to feel able to raise concerns openly and safely.
- Promote equality of opportunity in service delivery and employment, ensuring that no person receives less favourable treatment than another on the grounds of gender, marital status, race, religion, creed, colour nationality ethnic or national origin, sexual orientation or disability.
- Support prompt recruitment by identifying vacancies to the AWP Recruitment Team as soon as they arise, and participate in the selection and effective induction and onboarding of new joiners to the team.
- Ensure that all team members have a very positive introduction to the team and a well-supported first year.
- Take responsibility for encouraging people to stay with AWP, ensuring that you are aware whenever a member of your team is considering leaving, seeking to understand their reasons and encouraging them to stay.
- Ensure that key messages are cascaded in your team and that your team are encouraged to put forward suggestions.
- Show appreciation to your team when they do good work and support them when they are struggling.
- Consider the individual needs of team members for a healthy work-life balance and think about how their needs can be supported by providing flexible ways of working.
- Support all team members to keep their mandatory and statutory training up-to-date and identify the learning and development needs of all team members of the team ensuring that everyone has an up-to-date personal development plan (PDP).
- Ensure that every team member as at least an hour of supervision (one-to-one meeting) each month, this may include both managerial and clinical supervision.
- Ensure all team members receive a constructive assessment of their performance each year and set SMART objectives for the coming year.
- Seek support from the HR Team to tackle any worries regarding matters of discipline, including both conduct and capability concerns, supporting a just and restorative culture. Take prompt action regarding serious concerns and ensure clear plans are in place for problems which are less serious in nature but prove difficult to resolve.
- Act as a positive role model at all times, encouraging people to feel equal members of the team whilst working within clear frameworks and policies.
- Promote effective use of bank and agency nursing staff, providing a safe and effective service, complying with regulatory standards.
2. Performance and information management
- Ensure that you and your team understand all of the agreed key performance indicators for your service, particularly relating to outcomes and essential standards to be met.
- Ensure that you and your team understand data quality standards and that all the necessary records for your service are maintained and reported.
- Ensure that you and your team understand all of the clinical and business action plans relevant to your services.
- Ensure that you and your team understand all of the monitoring, auditing and reporting systems relevant to your services.
3. Service development and planning
- Actively seek opportunities for improvement for the services which you and your team provide by identifying research evidence and best practice elsewhere, interpreting/translating and facilitating adaptation for AWP.
- Analyse and interpret data to inform the strategic direction of the services which you and your team provide
- Ensure multidisciplinary involvement and the use of quality improvement (QI) techniques in service improvement, by negotiating shared solutions, facilitating the resolution of complex or contentious issues and managing any conflict into constructive outcomes.
- Ensure effective risk identification, analysis, mitigation and management within your services, encouraging all members of your team to be aware of and to manage risks.
4. Governance and policy
- Ensure that you understand all of the key governance requirements, policies and standards for your services and that these are communicated to your team; make sure your team understand the importance of good governance.
- Support the development of policies relevant to your services, including your team in this work.
5. Financial and resource management
- Monitor and exercise appropriate control over the budget(s) for your team, ensuring that both you and your team understand the resources available to support provision of a high quality and cost-effective service.
- Challenge and manage poor financial management and poor use of any resources.
5.3 Ensure optimum use of people and other resources; particularly though emphasizing use of substantive staffing and effective use of bank and agency staff.
- Ensure that whenever you authorise expenditure you are thoughtful and careful about whether there could be a more cost-effective solution.
- Ensure that your use of resources is in accordance with AWP Standing Orders and Standing Financial Instructions.
6. Stakeholder involvement
- Ensure that you are aware of the many stakeholders to your services (your key stakeholders will include all members of your multi-disciplinary team, other teams, service users, families, carers, local communities, other statutory agencies, other healthcare providers etc.
- Develop and maintain positive relationships with your key stakeholders, this may include proactive communications to ensure full involvement and engagement in the delivery of services and aims and objectives.
Implement and lead effective two-way communications to ensure that the Service areas are responsive to the needs of patients/service users and external pressures.
Person Specification
Education & Qualifications
Essential
- Educated to Masters degree level or equivalent experience
- Relevant management qualification or equivalent senior management experience
Experience & Knowledge
Essential
- Extensive experience within a Mental Health service
- Able to demonstrate/provide extensive evidence of senior leadership ability and experience
- Extensive experience developing and leading strategic and operational plans across large and complex services
- Extensive understanding and experience of national and international best practice in specialist areas and nursing
- A good understanding of Transformation plans and local position and the implications of these for service development and delivery
- Substantial experience in managing clinical community and in-patient services, budgets and people at service manager level and above.
Desirable
- Experience of delivering substantial service change and updating Trust Boards, Joint Commissioning Board and Scrutiny Committee on progress and delivering to agreed objectives
- Experience of management in another sector
Skills & Abilities
Essential
- Fully understands the regulatory environment within which the Division / AWP operates
- Ability to manage highly complex priorities
- Excellent communication skills, able to express complex information
- Ensures a culture and ethos of challenge and support for all staff
- Strong people management skills
- Commitment to achieving positive service outcomes
Person Specification
Education & Qualifications
Essential
- Educated to Masters degree level or equivalent experience
- Relevant management qualification or equivalent senior management experience
Experience & Knowledge
Essential
- Extensive experience within a Mental Health service
- Able to demonstrate/provide extensive evidence of senior leadership ability and experience
- Extensive experience developing and leading strategic and operational plans across large and complex services
- Extensive understanding and experience of national and international best practice in specialist areas and nursing
- A good understanding of Transformation plans and local position and the implications of these for service development and delivery
- Substantial experience in managing clinical community and in-patient services, budgets and people at service manager level and above.
Desirable
- Experience of delivering substantial service change and updating Trust Boards, Joint Commissioning Board and Scrutiny Committee on progress and delivering to agreed objectives
- Experience of management in another sector
Skills & Abilities
Essential
- Fully understands the regulatory environment within which the Division / AWP operates
- Ability to manage highly complex priorities
- Excellent communication skills, able to express complex information
- Ensures a culture and ethos of challenge and support for all staff
- Strong people management skills
- Commitment to achieving positive service outcomes
Disclosure and Barring Service Check
This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.
Applications from job seekers who require current Skilled worker sponsorship to work in the UK are welcome and will be considered alongside all other applications. For further information visit the UK Visas and Immigration website (Opens in a new tab).
From 6 April 2017, skilled worker applicants, applying for entry clearance into the UK, have had to present a criminal record certificate from each country they have resided continuously or cumulatively for 12 months or more in the past 10 years. Adult dependants (over 18 years old) are also subject to this requirement. Guidance can be found here Criminal records checks for overseas applicants (Opens in a new tab).
Additional information
Disclosure and Barring Service Check
This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.
Applications from job seekers who require current Skilled worker sponsorship to work in the UK are welcome and will be considered alongside all other applications. For further information visit the UK Visas and Immigration website (Opens in a new tab).
From 6 April 2017, skilled worker applicants, applying for entry clearance into the UK, have had to present a criminal record certificate from each country they have resided continuously or cumulatively for 12 months or more in the past 10 years. Adult dependants (over 18 years old) are also subject to this requirement. Guidance can be found here Criminal records checks for overseas applicants (Opens in a new tab).
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