Assistant Director of Communications and Involvement

Job responsibilities

The Assistant Director of Communications and Involvement is a critical member of the senior team both within the communications directorate and within the North West London ICS.

The post holder will:

Deputise for the Director of Communications and Involvement

Drive the strategy for supporting and ensuring alignment of public and stakeholder involvement across the system

Play a significant leadership role in community involvement and engagement activity, including managing the involvement team

Lead as the expert; develop and lead implementation of the community engagement strategy supporting NHS and social care improvements across North West London

Ensure effective co-production throughout the directorate

Engage with key strategic regional and national policy makers to inform development of strategy and policies

Develop and champion both internally and externally new initiatives or projects within the Directorate to drive awareness and understanding

Provide relevant expertise of best practice, regulatory requirements and learnings from other NHS and public sector communication and engagement programmes

Build and maintain good working relationships with a broad range of internal and external stakeholders, including service users and communities

Manage the Senior Involvement Managers and be responsible for their annual appraisal and development.

Identify examples of national and international best practice in public involvement and communications, to ensure that North West London benefits from relevant innovations.

Represent the ICB and ICS in sensitive, contentious and political environments and situations, delivering difficult messages to high-level and public audiences where required.

Provide and receive highly complex, sensitive and contentious information, including managing potentially antagonistic interactions with stakeholders, staff and communities.

Community and Stakeholder Involvement

Lead community involvement and engagement, including line management of the involvement function.

Lead on development and publication of regular insight reports, sharing what people and communities are telling us about our services.

Manage contracts and relationships with external providers relating to public and community involvement (e.g. the voluntary sector)

Oversee responses to ministerial briefings, PQs, MQTs and OSC requests

Build and maintain key relationships including residents and community groups, NHS provider trusts, local authorities, Healthwatch, the voluntary sector and other public services services

Develop strategic alliances with partner agencies to share best practice and work together to improve communications functions across the health and social care economy and beyond.

Ensure a best practice approach to public and stakeholder engagement.

Public Communications

Develop strategies for proactive, positive community involvement and reputation management around local improvements across integrated care, mental health, primary care, service reconfiguration and other projects as required

Establish and communicate the key messages and objectives of NHS NW London in order to promote a consistent message.

Communicate highly sensitive, complex and contentious information to a wide variety of individuals and groups, such as the media, local residents and communities, public involvement and third sector representatives, senior managers, Trusts, Local Authorities and ICBs.

Plan, develop and implement public education campaigns regarding service changes and behaviour change.

Build and maintain relationships with key external stakeholders, e.g. thought leadership bodies, campaign groups, journalists, local residents and communities.

Oversee commissioned public engagement initiatives for example, to support our winter campaign including managing procurement/bidding processes and ensuring delivery by commissioned organisations.

Commission and deliver relevant, high quality, accessible and timely publications for diverse audiences which effectively support, promote and raise awareness of the improvements in North West London.

Oversee responses to media and Freedom of Information requests as required.

Internal System Relations

Work in partnership with local borough-based teams across NHS NW London.

Ensure the development of strong working relationships with all levels of the NHS including developing and maintaining relationships with Department of Health, NHS England, NHS England (London) and the Trust Development Authority.

Build and maintain strong working relationships with local government and the community and voluntary sector.

Provide high quality, timely specialist advice on corporate, internal and online communications to the executive team, ICS and work stream leads

Facilitate and support the development of networks within the geographical locality that span health and social care organisations.

Service Change

Direct and support involvement staff to enable board assurance and compliance with regards to key statutory requirements, guidance on equalities and on improving patient experience.

Manage formal public consultations and resident engagement on proposed changes to services.

Build on and lead the ICB involvement strategy while ensuring that the voices of those seldom heard are proactively gathered to influence and drive change towards patient community centred services across the ICS.

Develop mechanisms to ensure that the ICB understands the communities it services and that all ICB decisions are informed by insights from local people and communities.

Train staff in statutory requirements and best practice around public consultation and resident involvement.

Operational

Link with managers and members of other workstreams to address inter-dependencies and ensure alignment

Represent the organisation in sensitive and political situations, delivering difficult messages where required to high-level audiences and members of the public

Accountable for developing and delivering strategy, promoting innovation and supporting operational excellence around communications, engagement and co-production in the organisation

Support all workstreams and inputting into wider ICS strategy.

Financial & Physical Resources

Accountability and sign off for all projects and initiatives

Constantly strive for value for money and greater efficiency in the use of budgets

Manage the commpublic engagement budget to ensure a planned, managed and balanced budget is maintained.

Use personally generated information and software, including the insights database and stakeholder database, to develop reports and commentary on public involvement and communications activity.

Use the Actus database as a performance management tool for involvement staff.

Staff Management

Manage, motivate and develop staff within the team to ensure that they are able to deliver the responsibilities of the team.

Recruit as necessary and performance manage a team that delivers a range of tasks within a matrix structure in a challenging environment.

Manage involvement team, including Senior Involvement Managers (2 x band 8A) and Insights Manager (band 7).

Ensure the provision of regular supervision, objective setting, appraisal and personal development plans to all direct reports and their staff

Research & Development

Incorporate research in all strategies to ensure continuous learning and improvement within communications, involvement and equalities.

Analyse strategy implementation, monitor and evaluate to ensure that communications, engagement, equalities and co-production through public involvement programme leads to positive changes and modernisation within service delivery.

Draw from experience and expertise of other NHS and public sector organisations.

As appropriate, undertake evaluation of the views of key audiences, including service users and members of the local population, in order to continually improve on our reputation and impact of our work programmes.

Planning and Organisation

Accountable for further developing and overseeing delivery of the involvement strategy

Develop plan for the delivery of the roles responsibilities including identifying interdependencies, managing risks, determining resource requirements and building in contingency where necessary

Be a senior leader in the Directorates strategic planning process and delivery of priorities, managing consequential adjustments to activities responsible for as required.

Management Skills

Essential

• Ability to demonstrate a high level of expertise in providing senior leadership
• Experience of managing staff who are also line managers

Communication Skills

Essential

• Highly developed communication skills with the ability to communicate on highly complex matters and difficult situations to a wide range of audiences
• Expert knowledge of accessibility guidelines and equalities legislation
• Ability to provide and receive, convey and present highly complex, sensitive and/or contentious information to large groups, responding openly to questions to ensure full understanding and engagement
• Ability to communicate with clinical, academic, all levels of staff and service users effectively and appropriately
• Able to communicate and advocate on highly sensitive and politically contentious issues to a wide range of audiences.

Experience

Essential

• Extensive experience at a senior level within a specialist communications/involvement function
• Extensive senior level NHS experience
• Experience of working with service users and other stakeholders to devise and implement effective communications and involvement strategies
• Extensive experience of working with political stakeholders such as MPs and councillors and senior stakeholders such as chief executives and directors.
• Media relations experience and a good understanding of all aspects of external communication
• Understanding of the background to and aims of current healthcare plans in NW London and appreciate the implications of this on engagement.
• Knowledge and experience of managing formal public consultation on service change
• Member of relevant professional body
• Understanding of the importance and impact of co-production with service users in transformational change and ability to communicate this effectively
• Experience of working in a high pressure environment subject to frequent change and often requiring intense concentration, the ability to move rapidly between tasks and to manage others facing similar challenges.

Desirable

• Understand the relationship between the Department of Health, NHS England, integrated care boards, integrated care systems, NHS provider Trusts, primary care, Healthwatch, third sector organisations and local authorities.
• Expertise in effective service user and public involvement practices.

Qualifications

Essential

• Educated to Master level or equivalent level of experience working at senior level in communications and public engagement.
• Extensive, specialist knowledge of communications and public involvement methodologies, acquired through specialist communications or public engagement qualification to Masters level or equivalent senior level experience and knowledge

Physical Skills

Essential

• IT literacy and competency relevant to communications and engagement, including knowledge of Microsoft Office, Excel and use of databases.

Analytical

Essential

• High level analytical skills: the ability to draw qualitative and quantitative data from a wide range of sources and present in a clear concise manner, drawing appropriate conclusions
• Ability to analyse qualitative and quantitative data, assess options and draw relevant conclusions and present these to senior colleagues, staff and residents and communities.
• Demonstrates sound judgement in the absence of clear guidelines or precedent, seeking advice as necessary from more senior management when appropriate
• Strong political astuteness and judgement; able to work effectively in a political environment.

Planning Skills

Essential

• Leadership, vision, strategic thinking and planning skills
• Excellent organisational skills
• Demonstrate ability to balance and manage multiple agendas, be an excellent multi-tasker who works well under pressure
• Experience in commissioning print and design and community outreach work

Certificate of Sponsorship

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).