Health and Social Care Services job family

Roles at this level carry out support for a range of front-line operational activities in the community, with supervision, delivering social care, health, and wellbeing services to residents with needs in Hertfordshire.

 

Scope of Work

Role holders carry out all necessary duties and tasks to provide support and operational delivery of social care and health services within the particular specialist area. Role holders perform a range of simple, routine tasks within basic procedures and under regular supervision. Thinking involves reacting and responding to routine queries, issues or circumstances but any unusual or non-routine queries are referred to others.

Communication skills will be involved in the relay and exchange of information, being polite and courteous to residents and families who are in need to ensure that they have access to the level of care that they need.

 

Accountabilities/Responsibilities

• Carry out a range of activities within a routine or established process to provide personal care and support people to manage their activities of daily living, including administering medication where required.
• Operate equipment, aids and adaptations in a standardised way to achieve the required results for service users.
• Comply with procedures including those governing health and safety and safeguarding to provide safe environments to children and families.
• Receive and respond to everyday enquiries from residents, escalating requests outside own knowledge to the appropriate person or area to enable people to maximise their independence.

 

Skills, knowledge and experience

• Good literacy and numeracy, ability to use standard process or IT.
• Knowledge of relevant standards and processes governing area of work.
• Basic knowledge of relevant practices, equipment, aids and adaptations within the specific service area.
• Relevant vocational qualification (or equivalent) or working towards.
• Prior experience of the relevant social care, health, and wellbeing service area.
• Experience of working within a team environment.
• Ability to communicate with tact and courtesy.

Roles at this level carry out a limited range of front-line operational activities in the community, delivering social care, health, and wellbeing services to residents with needs in Hertfordshire.

 

Scope of Work

Role holders carry out all necessary duties and tasks to provide support and operational delivery of social care and health services within the particular specialist area. Role holders perform a range of simple, routine tasks within basic procedures and under regular supervision. Thinking involves reacting and responding to routine queries, issues or circumstances but any unusual or non-routine queries are referred to others.

Communication skills will be involved in the relay and exchange of information, being polite and courteous to residents and families who are in need to ensure that they have access to the level of care that they need.

 

Accountabilities/Responsibilities

• Carry out a range of activities within a routine or established process to provide personal care and support people to manage their activities of daily living, including administering medication where required.
• Operate equipment, aids and adaptations in a standardised way to achieve the required results for service users.
• Comply with procedures including those governing health and safety and safeguarding to provide safe environments to children and families.
• Receive and respond to everyday enquiries from residents, escalating requests outside own knowledge to the appropriate person or area to enable people to maximise their independence.

 

Skills, knowledge and experience

• Good literacy and numeracy, ability to use standard process or IT.
• Knowledge of relevant standards and processes governing area of work.
• Basic knowledge of relevant practices, equipment, aids and adaptations within the specific service area.
• Relevant vocational qualification (or equivalent) or working towards.
• Prior experience of the relevant social care, health, and wellbeing service area.
• Experience of working within a team environment.
• Ability to communicate with tact and courtesy.

Roles at this level deliver a range of front-line operational activities within the field of social care, health, and wellbeing services. Focus is on responsiveness to service/delivery standards and the needs of residents. Roles may be required to work in situations where there is a degree of autonomy and judgement, and where escalation points are limited.

Scope of Work

Role holders provide support to specific social, health and care services by interpreting instructions and making a choice (from an established set) of the choices aligned to the job. This is in order to deliver a specific supportive service to a defined standard, clear specification or brief, to an agreed format and with specific (daily) deadlines.

Role holders will be working within clearly established policies and procedures and will need to apply a degree of interpretation and identification of alternative solutions when situations arise that will need to be dealt with immediately. Communication skills required to provide courtesy and tact to others, or to provide empathy and care.

 

Accountabilities/Responsibilities

• Provide technical and practical skills and services to vulnerable residents, meeting their needs by drawing on learning through formal training and/or experience.
• Deliver services to an agreed quality standard or specification to maximise quality and continuity, delivering within prescribed procedures and processes to ensure that the individuals receive a consistent and high-quality experience.
• Take responsibility for the quality of the provided service – to internal and external residents – meeting statutory requirements and protecting the individual as well as the council.
• May supervise and provide direction to lower level staff.Skills, knowledge and experience
• GCSE or Vocational equivalent, strong numeracy and literacy, proficient use of processes or IT.
• Knowledge of relevant systems, procedures and standards, gained through broad training and/or experience in a similar service environment.
• Knowledge of relevant practices, equipment, aids and adaptations within the specific service area.
• Experience of planning and organising own work over short timescales and across routine and familiar tasks and processes.
• Ability to communicate with tact and courtesy with external customers/clients.
• Ability to supervise and plan workload of others.

Roles at this level supervise a small team involved in operational and/or resident facing activities. Carries out a broad range of complex operational activities to defined time, cost and quality requirements.

 

Scope of Work

Role holders provide practical support to a specific social care, health, and wellbeing service that concentrates on the exercise of specialist skills. This may sometimes involve guiding or reviewing the work of others doing similar work within the team. Although most work follows established patterns, initiative is needed to handle equipment, processes and case work, to resolve problems and queries and react to changing priorities based on experience and judgement and without the need to refer to others.

There may be an expectation to supervise others’ work when necessary to ensure that agreed standards are being met, using good communication skill to holds others to account on quality of services being delivered.

 

Accountabilities/Responsibilities

• Diagnose problems or issues and provides appropriate established method when situations arise to support effective service delivery.
• Provide advice to more junior members of the team to ensure that established frameworks are worked within to protect both members of the community and the council.
• Use knowledge of social care, health, and wellbeing obligations and associated statutory requirements to meet the needs of residents, ensuring that the quality of service is high to deliver the best service.
• Assess the workload for the immediate team and puts in place a schedule of activities to meet the needs of residents, with clear priorities that needs to be addressed.
• Communicate requirements to staff and raises challenges with line management to ensure clear objectives aligned to service delivery.
• Ability to deal with more complex situations with minimal supervision.

 

Supervisory

• Monitor and review the quality of work or a small front-line team.

 

Individual

• Provide practical problem-solving, support and services drawing on training and experience.

 

Skills, knowledge and experience

• GCSE or Vocational equivalent, strong numeracy and literacy, proficient use of processes or IT.
• Understanding of specialised processes and methods gained through relevant training and experience.
• An understanding of relevant techniques and working practices and how to apply them without reference to others.
• Supervisory experience as a ‘first among equals’ overseeing a small team of similar roles to deliver short-term tasks within in the same area of expertise to set quality/timeliness standards.
• Ability to identify the needs of other staff and provide instruction, support and guidance.
• Can express self clearly and with accuracy, both in writing and verbally, in order to give and receive information effectively and intelligibly to a range of different colleagues or customers.

Roles at this level typically lead a small team to deliver specified operational outputs within defined systems, procedures and standards or works in specialised social care, health, and wellbeing field requiring relevant knowledge of appropriate processes. Delivers technically complex operational activities to already laid down standards.

 

Scope of Work

Role holders carry out routine operational activities or provide specialised support to a relevant social care and health area. They will work under general supervision, with mentoring support often at hand. As such, role holders operate with limited guidance and instructions and use their knowledge, initiative and judgement to determine how best to address and resolve daily problems.

There is discretion to determine short-term priorities for self (and maybe others) and role holders contribute to the development of the service by proposing and implementing improvements to current working methods. Role holders at this level may also provide team supervision as well as provide more specialist advice and support based on a broad understanding of their field.

 

Accountabilities/Responsibilities

• Plan own (and others’) work preparing for specific tasks and prioritising immediate requirements for the day or the week, referring to more senior colleagues for scheduling and undertaking non-standard work to support effective service delivery.
• Provide support to members of the community by delivering a range of care services to promote independence and safety of residents.
• Ensure core requirements such as safeguarding regulations and any other relevant legislative requirements are fully met.
• Understand the impact of incidents that arise and raises issues of concern where necessary to ensure appropriate resolution and the ongoing delivery of service to established standards.

 

Supervisory

• Lead a number of operational or front-line staff covering a similar field, ensuring that standards are met and that individuals in the team are developing appropriately.• May monitor and process financial information and review financial data.

 

Individual

• Provide technical and practical problem solving, support and services drawing on formal training and experience.

 

Skills, knowledge and experience

• Good level of education: GCSE, A-level or Vocational equivalent. Relevant vocational qualification or technical training. May be working towards a professional qualification.
• Clear understanding of the relevant work practices, processes and procedures relevant to the area.
• Knowledge of particular social care, health, and wellbeing area and proven practical application in a similar environment, with knowledge of working systems, processes and procedures.
• Ability to plan and organise own work over short timescales and across routine and familiar tasks and processes or experience in planning and organising own work and the work of others in the delivery of key practical activities across short timescales.
• Ability to identify the needs of other staff and provide instruction, support and guidance.
• Can express self clearly and with accuracy, both in writing and verbally, in order to give and receive information effectively and intelligibly to a range of different colleagues or customers.

Roles at this level determine how to organise resources to deliver a range of operational care activities at differing levels of complexity. Focus is on maximising performance and quality against target and compliance, and ultimately the best outcomes for Hertfordshire residents. 

 

Scope of Work

Role holder may be at entrant level to professional social care, health, and wellbeing disciplines, where roles will be required to apply their theoretical knowledge to the work. Reasoned application of established methods, systems and procedures will be based largely on a good understanding gained through experience and relevant qualifications and knowledge.

These roles will be expected to manage their own workload, and potentially offering peer support. Role holders will be providing analysis, interpretation and reasoned advice based on a level of theoretical understanding of methods, systems and procedures. It does not, however, require a level of understanding to design or fundamentally change the process. Communication skills will be required to provide technical advice or guidance within the specialised field of social care, health, and wellbeing.

 

Accountabilities/Responsibilities

• Ensure a range of social care, health, and wellbeing activities are scheduled either for themselves or others and are delivered according to agreed deadlines and standards to support Hertfordshire residents with needs.
• Manage a non-complex caseload, ensuring that residents needs are met within defined processes and procedures.
• Assess equipment and resources required to undertake tasks and assures their availability to meet the needs of residents.
• Facilitate or contribute to the workload of a specific/small team, to ensure that the quality of services is in line with expectations, and the needs of the community are met and exceeded.
• Manage priorities as they arise, resolving any escalated queries from more junior members of staff, using their technical knowledge to ensure that the best course of action is followed.
• Liaise with service users/customers to review requirements and resolve problems, providing specialist advice within area of social care support, including signposting to other services and helping them make links to other agencies and bodies.
• May monitor and control financial information and review financial data to contribute to management of budgets.

 

Skills, knowledge and experience

• Recognised vocational qualification plus broad experience in area of expertise or degree qualified. May be working towards a professional qualification or be of graduate entry level with sound practical experience.
• Detailed knowledge of the practical application of specialised processes/procedures relevant to the role, typically gained through extensive practical experience.
• Knowledge of methods, systems and processes that relate to the care and health field within which they work, and an understanding of relevant regulations and legislations and policy frameworks.
• Understanding of the organisation’s political environment.
• Experience of delivering high quality services within the relevant and specific service area.
• Ability to plan and organise own work across days, weeks and months, with a clear understanding of how own work affects others across the organisation.
• Good communication skills to be able to work with a range of stakeholders and to provide effective supervision to more junior members of staff.
• Ability to draw upon empathy and sensitivity to cause understanding in others and support them in accessing or delivering services.

Roles at this level provide specialist advice and/or professional delivery within a specific organisational unit of the health, care and wellbeing services, by producing advice, analysis, research, outputs, facilitation or information in line with existing policies and procedures, aiding vulnerable members of the community.

 

Scope of Work

Role holders will be social care, health, and wellbeing professionals providing specialist services and advice within their own technical area. Role holders work within established frameworks and procedures but have freedom to interpret them to solve problems, with a strong focus on working with partner or external agencies to deliver services to meet specified objectives and targets.

Thinking is about selecting the correct course of action from established procedures and the focus is on owning the process, ensuring that the council, partner agencies, and the residents of Hertfordshire get the correct and most relevant support on social care, health, and wellbeing issues. Support is available and proposed solutions can be readily checked, but there will be an expectation for role holders to work independently, planning over days to weeks ahead, with activities undertaken being broadly similar in nature. Good communication skills are required to provide advice in specialist area of social care, health, and wellbeing arena to a number of stakeholders, both internally and externally, and potentially to supervise more junior members of staff.

 

Accountabilities/Responsibilities

• Build and use effective relationships with a wide range of people, networks, communities and professionals to improve outcomes for residents, understanding and working effectively with a range of situations as they arise.
• Use appropriate frameworks to make and contribute towards assessments to ensure that appropriate support is offered to those in need and ensure that considerations are made to the cost-effectiveness of these plans.
• Act on received instructions and requests, plans and organises resources, and makes appropriate arrangements to ensure that work is carried out efficiently.
• Participate in planning and reviewing cases and projects to support decisions or arrangements, using knowledge, analysis or research to deliver technical expertise.
• Undertake a caseload of their own with a requirement to work autonomously where appropriate to deliver required outputs, prioritising their workload as necessary.
• Provide feedback on operational issues and events to support the improvement of work and service plans.

 

Managerial

• Supervises the day-to-day performance of an operational team in line with quality and standards.
• Cascading information on the corporate context so that organisational messages are understood in the team and disseminating best practices to help teams understand and enact changes and improvement.
• May monitor and control financial information and review financial data to contribute to financial planning.

 

Professional

• Develop and maintain effective relationships and communication with internal and/or external social care, health, and wellbeing service users. 

 

Skills, knowledge and experience

• Recognised vocational or professional qualification plus broad experience in area of expertise, and/or degree qualified. May be working towards a professional qualification or be of graduate entry level with sound practical experience. Maintains professional registration where appropriate.
• Detailed knowledge of own service area and relevant working systems, equipment and/or IT software, plus an awareness of council policies and services related to the role.
• Working knowledge of regulatory processes and policy frameworks.• Appreciation of wider internal and external issues impacting own team/department.
• Understanding of the organisation’s political environment.
• Experience of co-ordinating and supporting service delivery in the relevant service area.
• Good communication skills with experience of liaising with the public and partner agencies to deliver outcomes.
• Ability to work with a range of people and draw upon empathy and sensitivity to cause understanding in others and support them in accessing or delivering services. 

Roles at this level provide technical/professional services and advice to customers within a specific service area. Roles will use expertise to deliver a workload for which they have a standalone professional responsibility and focuses on understanding a wide range of procedures and policies and navigates a path through them to advise on appropriate solutions.

 

Scope of Work

Role holder is a qualified and registered social care, health, and wellbeing professional, who will provide services and advice internally and externally within a specialist social or health care area. Accountable for the quality and professionalism of their work and advice, role holders answer questions about ‘what’ needs to be done and ‘how’ to do them, in specific (and often complex) situations.

The emphasis is on short-term solutions and at this level horizons rarely extend beyond weeks/months. Their work will be based on a theoretical understanding of their technical/professional field, but they will be operating within well-established professional procedures and defined council policies. Work will involve a broad range of complex problems and role holders will need to manage changing priorities and use professional judgement to respond to differing situations.

Communication skills will be used to relay technical advice and guidance, working with members of the community to ensure that their needs are met.

 

Accountabilities/Responsibilities

• Provide practice development opportunities for own team and partner organisation.
• Responsible for making professional risk-informed complex decisions.
• Provide statutory support to residents, including the provision of information, advice, assessment, support planning and safeguarding in line within statutory guidance and council policy and procedures.
• Work in partnership with voluntary sector organisations, partners and others to provide integrated and coordinated support to residents and families in the community.
• Manage an allocated caseload to deliver specialised support and services to residents and the community within defined standards.
• Make recommendations on procedural, process and service improvements to enhance overall team and service performance.
• Recognise and monitor risk, escalating issues to more senior colleagues when necessary to ensure that situations are addressed at the earliest possible time.
• Operate effectively within and contribute to the development of organisations and services, including multi-agency and inter-professional settings.

 

Managerial

• Provides line management to a small team. This will include translating wider objectives into detailed activities for their team, and monitoring performance against this.
• Control team activities to meet (daily/weekly/monthly) caseloads performance targets and schedules.
• Cascading information on the corporate context so that organisational messages are understood in the team and disseminating best practices to help teams understand and enact changes and improvement.
• May support the control of budgets to deliver service priorities and to ensure appropriate resources are available.

 

Professional

• Prioritise work and resolves day-to-day operating resource issues.
• May provide specialist development or support to core/standard professionals.

 

Skills, knowledge and experience

• Typically degree qualified (or equivalent) in relevant subject plus number of years’ experience in a similar role or significant vocational experience, demonstrating development through involvement in a series of progressively more demanding relevant roles. Formal professional qualification (where relevant).
• Up to date and thorough knowledge and understanding of the work practices, systems, processes and procedures relevant to the role, and a good understanding of the council policies and services related to the role.
• Knowledge of relevant legal obligations relating to social care, health, and wellbeing, in addition to the policies, processes and procedures governing the service area including implementing evidence-based practice.
• Understanding of the organisation’s political environment and able to explain the formal political structures and decision making processes in the council.
• Ability to plan and organise own work across weeks and months, with a clear understanding of how own work affects others across the organisation.
• Excellent communication skills to deal with members of the community, providing specialist advice to residents in differing situations with empathy, and to communicate at different levels across the organisation.

Roles at this level autonomously manage complex caseloads in social care, health, and wellbeing to deliver complete solutions and expert advice in an area of specialism, contributing towards the delivery of overarching strategy and inputting into wider organisational and resident benefits.

Roles at this level will be expected to undertake capacity-building with Hertfordshire residents, communities and user groups in order to contribute their views on service provision to commissioners.

 

Scope of Work

Role holders will be expected to work on complex or broad social care, health, and wellbeing cases with an expectation to supervise the work of more junior professionals within the same service, linked to a similar area of expertise. Role holders will need to know their way around a wide range of procedures and use these to fit each local situation as they arise. Although corporate frameworks, procedures and processes exist, there is a requirement to feedback on what works, what doesn’t and what should be done in future to improve in the short- to medium-term.

Communication skills will be required to provide advice and technical guidance within specific area of specialism, to manage streams of activities, and to use expertise in social, health and care services to deliver outputs, liaising with a number of stakeholders to deliver improvements and solutions to residents’ needs.

 

Accountabilities/Responsibilities

• Undertake assessments packages and develop support plans, to ensure that management of health, care and wellbeing of residents is done in line with agreed service procedures and national legislation.
• Work with multiple stakeholders to deliver solutions in complex and broad cases, providing expertise and technical knowledge to support residents of Hertfordshire, as well as providing guidance to more junior members of staff.
• Represent the council in multidisciplinary work with health, police and other colleagues, working collaboratively to ensure effective communication and information sharing to support decision making processes on specific cases, projects, or areas of work.
• Use advanced skills and knowledge within their area to assess, support planning and manage risks for residents, applying council policy to support the team to manage risk appropriately.
• Decide and applies agreed standards to services, identifying improvements and developments locally, that can be influenced by best-in-class externally.
• Build relationships with internal and external stakeholders/customers to deliver expert social, health and care services to residents of Hertfordshire.

 

Managerial

• Supervise or manages a medium-sized team to provide specialist social care, health, and wellbeing services to the residents of Hertfordshire.
• Cascading information on the corporate context so that organisational messages are understood in the team and disseminating best practices to help teams understand and enact changes and improvement.
• Manage allocated budgets and other resources (such as equipment or buildings) to deliver the agreed results.

 

Professional

• Provide specialist social, health and care services to particular area of the council, often ensuring that they bring an external perspective to internal issues.

 

Skills, knowledge and experience

• Typically professionally qualified and/or relevant degree (or equivalent), plus substantial experience OR substantial vocational experience demonstrating development through involvement in a series of progressively demanding roles. Formal professional qualification (where relevant).
• Up to date and authoritative knowledge of the work practices, systems, processes and procedures relevant to the role, and able to apply this knowledge in new and varied circumstances.
• Detailed knowledge in area of social care, health, and wellbeing specialism including an understanding of broader issues and practices in the sector.
• Experience in supervising the work of others, holding them to account on deliverables and results, and proven track record of planning and organising own work and the work of others in a small/medium team or unit.
• Organisation and political awareness, and the ability to understand the political implications for certain decisions and provide advice and guidance for political representatives.
• Ability to contribute to wider team or departmental budget planning through the provision financial activity analysis or budgeting related to own area of work.
• Able to identify and alert senior managers to any areas where agreed policies, procedures and systems may not be up-to-date or sufficient to protect the organisation from risk, particularly when dealing with families or residents.
• Excellent communication skills to deal with members of the community, providing specialist advice to residents in differing situations with empathy, and to communicate at different levels across the organisation.
• Ability to influence and provide specialist guidance and advice to others, including the ability to motivate others.

Roles at this level ensure all workloads are organised and achieved through the effective management of resources to meet targets; for example, time, cost and quality of health and social care service (quality of life and wellbeing). Focus is on implementing policy and processes to guarantee the effective delivery of immediate outputs, with significance on safeguarding.

 

Scope of Work

Role holders will be concerned with the organisation and deployment of professional social care, health and wellbeing services across the community, using expertise and experience to interpret and apply policy to support departmental and individual needs to ensure that policies are satisfactorily applied to a particular area or group of residents. Thinking is therefore often focused on providing expert support to specific parts of the community rather than on a broader scale. In order to contribute to wider policy decisions, role holders will appreciate how policies impact locally on residents and the wider communities.

Developments are about better ways to do things using existing resources using their professional insight. By definition, thinking takes place within an existing professional framework but these are guidelines rather than rules and leave scope for discriminating application. Excellent communication skills are needed to work as a partner to areas of the organisation, to understand local requirements and to translate these into reality.

 

Accountabilities/Responsibilities

• Review, challenge and sign off recommended packages and support plans, to ensure that management of care and wellbeing of residents is done in line with agreed service procedures and national legislation.
• Resolve complex and high-risk situations using negotiation and diplomacy, involving individuals, their families, or staff groups, seeking support from a senior manager when required to fully protect residents.
• Build and develop partnerships and relationships with members, senior officers, external organisations and the community to ensure services are developed in line with changing priorities and needs.
• Operationalise plans and deploys resources to meet clearly articulated objectives, whilst using ability to shape and tailor their approach to deliver quality and safe services.
• Communicate goals and expectations and leads, controls and motivates a team (which may be qualified or non-qualified care staff) to deliver excellent services.
• Control costs through effective delivery of principal processes and procedures, including safeguarding requirements.
• Use personal experience to identify and make recommendations on improvements to ways of working, processes and procedures that will enhance service efficiency and effectiveness.

 

Managerial

• Determine which services and processes will be delivered in a small department, where the nature of work being undertaken is similar in nature.
• Develop, manage and motivate a team of service professionals so that they can deliver high standards of services.
• Determines work plans for a team of professionals and co-ordinates input from others within a professional support service to meet specific objectives.
• Motivating and coaching will be a key part of the role; leading by example and cascading information on the corporate context so that organisational messages are understood in the team.
• Manage and control of budgets to deliver service priorities.

 

Professional

• Make technical/professional recommendations that have a noticeable impact on local organisational performance. Give advice and support on specific problems and issues.

 

Skills, knowledge and experience

• Typically professionally qualified/relevant degree (or equivalent), plus substantial experience. Management qualification (if required).
• Up to date and authoritative knowledge of the work practices, systems, processes and procedures relevant to the role, and able to apply this knowledge in new and varied circumstances.
• In-depth expertise in the regulations/legislation within their area of specialism and an awareness of broader developments within social care, health, and wellbeing.
• Organisational and political acumen and the ability to understand the political implications for certain decisions and provide advice and guidance for political representatives.
• Experience in supervising the work of others, holding them to account on deliverables and results, and a proven track record of planning and organising own work and the work of others in a small/medium team or unit to ensure an exceptional service is delivered to residents.
• Is able to conduct robust service and financial analysis and reporting on actual or potential variances from agreed budget to enable appropriate decision-making.
• Able to identify and alert senior managers to any areas where agreed policies, procedures and systems may not be up-to-date or sufficient to protect the organisation from risk, particularly when dealing with families or residents.
• Ability to build and maintain effective networks and relationships and influence others.

Roles at this level provide authoritative advice and expertise in social care, health and wellbeing service to the wider directorate. Focus is on being a lead advisor or specialist within a discipline. They input into wider strategy but mainly are expected to define new processes or procedures covered by strategic direction, ensuring operations run smoothly and are meeting the needs of residents.

 

Scope of Work

Role holders will be senior level professionals within the council, required to lead social care, health and wellbeing service teams within their field of expertise. Role holders will use professional insight to contribute to council policies, providing specialist advice on development and implementation. The majority of the role will be concerned with the current business planning cycle, but role holders will provide broader advice on longer-term developments. Solutions to problems will be designed to meet set objectives in line with existing internal or external practices. Work will typically be bound by existing strategic oversight, though role holders would be expected to use their insight to provide specific improvement to new and current services. Excellent communication skills are needed to influence and negotiate at a high level across the council.

 

Accountabilities/Responsibilities

• Work across partnerships and external networks and public organisations to develop approaches, procedures and enable the delivery of change to enable a joined-up approach to the shaping and delivery of services.
• Give high level advice and support on issues, seen as the lead expert within a defined and specialist area within the arena of social care, health and wellbeing services, providing the council with the highest quality expertise.
• Make professional recommendations, including interpretation of national policy and legislation, which have a significant impact on the community and improvements in the service to deliver quality services and outcomes to residents of Hertfordshire.
• Represent the council as an authority in the discipline to external stakeholders and audiences to resolve queries and issues as they arise in the community, and to inform corporate and political leadership.
• Identify innovative approaches and methods of delivery that create and support the continuous improvement of services to improve quality, efficiency and the business impact of the function. This includes identifying external best practice and bringing this in line with the needs of the residents of Hertfordshire to ensure best in class service.

 

Managerial

• Oversight and management of a team of professionals with a degree of diversity of activity, and an expectation to integrate across these activities.
• Ensure managers are working within their delegated powers to provide quality of practice and service performance.
• Manage the control of budgets to deliver service priorities.

 

Professional

• Role provides high level, professional level expertise to stakeholders both internally and externally, inputting into policy and strategy.

 

Skills, knowledge and experience

• Typically professionally qualified/relevant degree (or equivalent), plus substantial experience. Management qualification (if required).
• Highly developed knowledge of the principles, theory and practice of specialist area.
• A thorough and broad understanding of the statutory, legislative and regulatory landscape surrounding social care, health and wellbeing services, with experience of taking best practice solutions and applying these internally.
• Strong organisational and political acumen, combined with understanding of context and the politics present within the council, and with partners and providers.
• Experience of leading diverse professional staff/project teams to deliver specialist care, health and wellbeing services to the community, combined with experience of complex planning and providing full line management.
• Ability to conduct systematic reviews of the application of risk management policies, procedures and systems across a unit/ department/ function and of making evidence-based recommendations on appropriate improvements or amendments.
• Ability to negotiate and agree the allocation of budget for a defined unit/area of activity using evidence-based financial analysis to justify their request, and leads the planning, scheduling and deployment of those resources efficiently and effectively.
• Ability to develop long term relationships and networks external to the council, to influence and change behaviour.
• Political acumen, and the ability to understand the political implications for certain decisions and provide advice and guidance for political representatives.