Allied Health Professional (AHP) Head of Service
We are seeking an AHP Head of Service for a 6 month period, who has the energy and passion to make a sustainable and lasting difference, clinically leading our teams to deliver safe, effective and compassionate care to our population.
The AHP Head of Service will demonstrate strong professional clinical leadership and provide specialist clinical advice across Adult Community Therapies (Community Therapy Teams and Falls). Acting in support of the Divisional and Deputy Divisional Nurse/AHP Directors. The AHP Head of Service will be a member of the divisional leadership team and work as a triumvirate with the Nursing Head of Service and Operational Head of Service.
The AHP Head of Service will play a key role in developing the service to meet the population's needs at locality and regional level and will have a service development portfolio and clinical leadership role. They will ensure services provide safe, effective, personalised and evidence-based clinical interventions and holistic care.
Main duties of the job
The AHP Head of Service will be a role model for leadership, training, coaching, and facilitating staff development at all levels. They will be expected to provide a clinical perspective to divisional planning and decision-making, interpreting national guidance in relation to all aspects of clinical care delivered by the Trust and advise on the implementation within the modernisation and changing environment of all service areas.
The AHP Head of Service will role model leadership behaviours for improvement, supporting the building of Quality Improvement capability and capacity in the division and leading improvement programmes. The postholder will, working with the Operational Head of Service and other clinical heads of service, be responsible for clinical governance including the identification, reporting, management and mitigation of risk and patient safety.
About us
We are the main provider of NHS community services across East and West Sussex. Our 6,000 staff serve a population of 1.3 million providing essential medical, nursing, and therapeutic care to adults and children.
Our Trust vision is to provide excellent care at the heart of the community, helping people plan, manage, adapt to changes in their health, supporting avoidable hospital admissions and reducing hospital stay times.
Job responsibilities
Operational
* In conjunction with the Divisional and Deputy Nursing/AHP Director, support the line management of nurses/AHPs working in the service within their locality including performance and professional standards management.
* Ensure a consistent approach is taken, so that all clinical staff comply with Trust-wide policies and procedures.
* Ensure clinical staff within the services are trained to an appropriate level in Quality Improvement and are confident and competent to use QI methodology, tools and resources.
* Encourage a culture of innovation, welcoming ideas for improvement, and supporting clinicians with taking forward change, ensuring it is data-driven, responds to the patient voice and leads to improved outcomes for patients, efficiency and productivity.
* Support the development of a data led approach to improvement and evaluation. Contribute to the collation and use of clinical data and be involved in subsequent improvements required, relating to outcome/quality/performance indicators.
* Lead on research for the services in their portfolio, encouraging and supporting the development of programmes of research ensuring a multi-disciplinary, multi-professional approach and working closely with the Trusts research team.
* Responsible for ensuring that Divisional clinical staff understand and effectively respond to identified trends from complaints, and patient feedback, ensuring that opportunities to learn are maximised.
* Ensure systems are in place that support the delivery of action plans, embedding learning into practice and sharing learning and improvement.
* To undertake special projects, which develop the understanding and knowledge of clinical nursing/AHP practice.
People and professional leadership
* To provide line management to staff within the Divisional team as required.
* To provide professional leadership and support to the staff employed within the Division and advise on all professional and clinical management matters, acting as a point of escalation for issues of concern.
* To work closely with the Education team and take responsibility and accountability for developing and implementing professional competencies in specific areas of practice as service requirements and change in workforce profile dictates.
* To work with the leadership team on the development, implementation and evaluation of workforce requirements and support the recruitment and retention, training and development of staff.
* To proactively manage matters relating to poor capability or poor performance ensuring that Trust performance management systems are adhered to.
* To maintain an analytical knowledge and awareness of local and national health care issues, such as NICE Guidance, Safeguarding Children and Vulnerable Adults and the Care Quality Commission.
Patient Care, Quality and Governance
* Respond to issues, complaints and feedback through systems and staff to resolve issues promptly and locally, including liaison with patients and relatives as needed, dealing with difficult issues sensitively.
* Ensuring that patient and public involvement is integral to the planning, development and delivery of clinical services. Work closely with representative groups to gain feedback on service delivery issues which can be used to inform improvement.
* Lead and support relevant staff in the investigation and action planning into clinical incidents, ensuring learning is shared and embedded.
* Work with the Operational Head of Service to be accountable for the implementation and monitoring of actions from governance, quality and safety group that relate to the clinical area within the span of responsibility. Provide clinical leadership to governance meetings, either as a chair or member as required.
* To lead programmes of work to demonstrate improvements in practice and ensure that patients can have confidence in the services, actively seeking the views of patients and public.
* To ensure robust systems, monitoring and follow-up action is in place regarding infection, prevention and control.
* To implement the Trusts Risk Management Strategy, proactively identifying, recording and managing clinical risk.
* To ensure Health and Safety standards are adhered to within the Division and staff are appropriately trained to enable them to undertake their duties safely and without unnecessary risk.
* Present highly complex information to large groups of staff or members of the public, this may include reconciling conflicting views where there are significant barriers to acceptance or understanding.
Performance
* Within the triumvirate support the management of the performance of services, including developing plans to mitigate risks and taking remedial action, supporting clinicians to make changes as required to pathways, access and ways of working to improve.
Finance & resources
* To ensure optimum use of resources establishing and maintaining effective processes to ensure financial control/balance to deliver the service and professional objectives in line with commissioned activity, budgeted income and financial frameworks.
* With the Operational Head of Service, ensure bank and agency spend is within the agreed control limits, appropriate authorisation of exceptions to maintain patient safety and safe, cost-effective rostering.
Partnership
* Utilising own clinical expertise and experience work in partnership with the patient, their relatives, and clinical teams within own division and across other divisions in the development of care pathways to provide assessment, planning, delivery, and evaluation of high-quality seamless care.
* To engage and work collaboratively with patients and with other stakeholder groups (for example, neighbourhood forums, expert patient groups and local authority consultative forums) to improve the patient experience, and to ensure appropriate advice, guidance, or ancillary services are provided to patients, relatives, or carers.
* Represent the Trust with partner organisations and work closely with them to institute integrated working in the best interest of patient care.
* Establish excellent communication with professional/clinical leads within the Trust and in partner organisations.
* To act as a key conduit for dissemination of information from the leadership team to clinical staff and vice versa.
* Work in collaboration with colleagues to challenge behaviours that undermine equality and diversity, privacy and dignity adhering to the Human Rights Act, Trust policies and other relevant local and national policy.
* Participate in Trusts out of hours on call rota and ensure competencies and training is up to date.
* Have an understanding of the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 with respect to Emergency Planning, Resilience and Response (EPRR) and lead on implementation of the division's obligations under the Act.
* Ensure that business continuity plans (BCPs) are developed and regularly tested for all areas within the division in collaboration with the Emergency Planning Manager.
* Ensure systems and processes are in place to deliver accurate timely statutory information requirements including the Trust Data Protection Policy and Freedom of Information Act.
* Ensure Equality, Diversity and Inclusion are embedded into the core business of the Division in line with the corporate framework; including governance arrangements, planning processes, and ensuring this is embedded within the ongoing policy and service development processes.
* To prepare, develop and write business cases, bids, and information papers as required.
* Undertake other duties commensurate with this grade of post in agreement with the relevant line manager.
* Annually agree appropriate personal objectives and a personal development plan with the Chief Nurses team, in line with Trust objectives.
* Responsible for ensuring identified training and development is undertaken appropriate to the postholders role.
Person Specification
Qualifications and Professional Registration
* Postgraduate qualification in management or equivalent level of knowledge acquired through experience. Evidence of continuous professional/leadership/management development.
Experience
* Substantial experience in a leadership role including contributing to operational management of services. Experience in management of health services Experience of monitoring, analysing and assessing clinical operational performance across multiple services. Experience of managing performance across multiple services, including the drafting, implementation and monitoring of remedial action plans. Experience of managing budgets across multiple services and working in liaison with management accountants to establish underlying causes of budget variation. Experience in drafting service level business plans, local standard operating procedures and policies. Significant experience of staff management, including recruitment and retention of staff, performance management, and managing sickness absence, and misconduct. Experience of managing staff including appraisal and personal development planning. Experience of partnership working with a wide range of statutory and non-statutory service providers. Experience of assessing risks across clinical services and developing risk management plans. Experience of managing multi-disciplinary teams. Experience of business and operational planning across multiple teams.
Skills and Knowledge
* Knowledge of NHS Human Resource Policies and Procedures. Knowledge of clinical and operational governance and its application to services. Knowledge of multidisciplinary team working and an understanding of differing professional roles boundaries. Advanced knowledge of clinical operational processes, including budget management, target setting, and action planning and performance management. Knowledge of NHS targets and regulatory requirements. Ability to monitor and maintain standards of care across a range of clinical services. Ability to identify, assess and manage clinical and operational risks.
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.
£62,215 to £72,293 a year Per annum/Pro-rata
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