In the Department of Health and Social Care, we are proud of our purpose – to enable everyone to live more independent, healthier lives for longer. To achieve this, and create a great place to work, we have four values: we are inclusive, we constantly improve, we challenge, and we are agile. If this sounds like an environment you would like to work in, we would love to hear from you.
The Department of Health and Social Care’s Ministerial Visits and Events Team supports the Secretary of State and Ministers to deliver on their vision for visits and ministerial events.
The Department supports ministers in leading the nation’s health and social care to help people live more independent, healthier lives for longer. It is responsible for delivering a wide variety of policies to protect and improve global and domestic health by tackling issues that are important to all of us, including public health, the NHS and social care.
The visits team sits within the Private Office, Intelligence and Parliamentary Team (PIP) led by the Principal Private Secretary to the Secretary of State and this post offers a unique opportunity to play a key role in supporting the Secretary of State’s vision for health and social care, and to work on creative visits supporting one the Government’s key missions to cut NHS waiting time.
We are looking for a brilliant candidate to support the team to deliver first-class ministerial visits and events. The visits programme is a channel through which the Department of Health will communicate its strategic priorities around improving and protecting the nation’s health, to the public, media, delivery partners and stakeholders.
The post will involve working closely with ministerial offices and special advisers, as well as policy, comms, frontline services such as the NHS and care homes, charities and third sector organisations to identify ministerial visit and event opportunities to support communications plans around policy priorities, and contributing to the Department’s overall comms strategy.
You will be involved in weekly comms and private office meetings to identify visit opportunities, and you will support the team’s strategic planning and delivery to ensure a successful programme of visits and events that meets the Department’s objectives and Ministers’ requirements. You will also be required to provide support to other departments to source visit locations for visits by VIPs within the health system.
From one day to the next you could be helping the team to plan a major Secretary of State speech, or exploring visit opportunities to demonstrate how the country is cutting waiting lists or improving healthcare outcomes through the use of innovative technology.
The post holder will design and deploy visits creatively to show the public how we are meeting our commitments on health and social care, so that each visit tells a compelling story about DHSC’s priorities that supports our narrative, effectively leveraging visuals and opportunities for announcements.
This is a demanding role and the team’s work will be fast-moving and varied, requiring resourcefulness, an ability to respond quickly to changing events, and resilience. The role requires frequent travel and overnight stays across the UK, and the successful candidate will occasionally be on call outside of regular office hours when necessary.
Role responsibilities
The successful candidate will:
* Support the DHSC Ministerial Visits and Events Team with the planning, coordination and delivery of Secretary of State and Ministerial visits and events.
* Prepare strategic forward-looks for ministerial visits, ensuring proposals are in line with departmental and ministerial priorities.
* Work closely with policy, private office and media team colleagues to identify visit opportunities and ensure that they align with the department’s business and communications objectives.
* Compile and coordinate ministerial briefings, itineraries and other materials to consistently high standards and contribute to planning tools, ensuring they remain up to date and accurate.
* Proactively build relationships with private office, comms, departmental and other colleagues to ensure the successful delivery of visits and events.
* Support the visits team’s day-to-day planning by taking part in site recces, leading on-the-day delivery of visits and events, and taking part in evaluation to ensure continuous improvement.
* Provide proactive direction and guidance to ministers’ offices and policy officials on visits and events managed by the team.
* Work closely with the communications team to ensure collaboration on visits and events and that we are maximising promotion of our priorities via a wide range of channels.
* The successful candidate may also be asked to undertake other duties in line with their role and responsibilities, experience and grade.