Employment Support Delivery Manager

The Life Rooms is one of Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trusts innovative services. Our Social Model of Health is designed to support the prevention and population health agendas by activation through a three-pillar model; learning, social prescribing and community. The three-pillar model enables people to become more activated in their own health; it operates within a social approach that focuses on prevention and the enabling of community and community assets to encourage system change.
We have an exciting opportunity to work within our Individual Placement and Support Services (IPS Services) for an enthusiastic and driven individual to join The Life Rooms Social Inclusion Team as the Employment Support Delivery Manager.
This is a permanent, full-time position (37.5 hours), and the successful candidate will be based at The Life Rooms in Lee Valley, although there will be an expectation for regular travel across Liverpool, Warrington, Halton, and Wirral.
The successful candidate will join an enthusiastic, innovative, and motivated service dedicated to providing high quality services through a rigorous, national fidelity criterion.
The main purpose of the role will be to:
Work with the clinical teams in Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust and Cheshire and Wirral Partnership Trust to enhance their knowledge of the IPS services thereby increasing the support to service users with a severe and enduring mental health diagnosis to find and retain paid employment.
Provide strategic and operational leadership to the IPS services (Team Leaders and Employment Specialists) to ensure the attainment of key performance indicators set by NHS England and local commissioners, and to grow the portfolio of IPS services through appropriate tender submissions.
Work with IPS Grow and Social Finance, through regular reviews, to substantiate the quality of the services and evidence fidelity to the national and international IPS model.
Work at a strategic level, through the appropriate Chambers of Commerce, to engage with local employers across a wide range of sectors to ensure the creation of sustainable work opportunities in and environment that reduces stigma towards individuals living with a mental health diagnosis.
Mersey Care is one of the largest trusts providing physical health and mental health services in the North West, serving more than 1.4 million people across our region and are also commissioned for services that cover the North West, North Wales and the Midlands.
We offer specialist inpatient and community services that support physical and mental health and specialist inpatient mental health, learning disability, addiction and brain injury services. Mersey Care is one of only three trusts in the UK that offer high secure mental health facilities.
At the heart of all we do is our commitment to ‘perfect care’ – care that is safe, effective, positively experienced, timely, equitable and efficient. We support our staff to do the best job they can and work alongside service users, their families, and carers to design and develop future services together. We’re currently delivering a programme of organisational and service transformation to significantly improve the quality of the services we provide and safely reduce cost as we do so.
Flexible working requests will be considered for all roles.
PRINCIPLE RESPONSIBILITIES
Strategic oversight of the IPS services
1. Champion IPS services across clinical teams to ensure that service users have access to support to gain or retain paid employment alongside their clinical care.
2. Deputise for the Business and Innovation Lead as and when necessary, in relation to IPS services.
3. Have oversight of the national employment agenda, engaging in local, regional, and national networking opportunities.
4. Have oversight of the local employment landscape through liaison with the local Chambers of Commerce and the utilisation of local employment data.
5. Work to support the growth of local employment partners through strategic liaison with the relevant Chambers of Commerce.
6. Work proactively with the relevant external agencies influencing the national supported employment agenda, for example IPS Grow, the Centre for Mental Health, and the Cheshire and Merseyside Integrated Care Board.
7. Attend the Cheshire and Merseyside Integrated Care Board IPS Network meetings to feedback progress on the services.
8. Be responsible for ensuring that all service data flows through the Mental Health Services Data System to ensure that NHSE and local commissioners have up-to-date and relevant information about the services and performance outcomes.
9. Prepare quarterly performance reports for the commissioners and attend quarterly contract monitoring meetings to present them.
10. Oversee the Team Leaders to develop and implement a robust outcome measurement practice that demonstrates the effectiveness of the IPS services and their fidelity to the IPS model which ensures a high-performance rating in annual fidelity reviews.
11. Regularly review and audit the Team Leaders practices to ensure that the services develop appropriately whilst maintaining rigorous quality improvement.
12. Work proactively with the Quality and Research Lead and the Research Team to identify quality improvement initiatives and research activity around the IPS model.
13. Be aware of national training programmes to ensure that the IPS teams remain up to date with the most current implementation of health improvement and supported employment thinking that meets the evolving needs of the local population and reduces health inequalities.
14. Undertake the full range of human resource activity for the IPS Team Leaders including recruitment, induction, training, supervision, sickness management, grievance, and disciplinary management etc.
Business as Usual (Liverpool, Wirral, Warrington, and Halton IPS services)
15. Support the Business and Innovation Lead to improve the performance and quality of the three current IPS services in Liverpool, Wirral, Warrington, and Halton.
16. Prepare and present quarterly quality performance reports to the commissioners, developing recovery plans where appropriate.
17. Work collaboratively with the community mental health teams to continue to enhance their understanding of the service and to co-develop accessible pathways of referral for service users.
18. Be responsible for the quality of the Employment Support offer, ensuring robust governance is in place around Employment Support processes, and data entries onto the clinical system (Rio).
19. Provide monthly service reports to referring clinicians to enable them to see the benefit of the new service for their patients.
New Business
21. Support the Business and Innovation Lead to develop and introduce a new IPS service in the Step Forward and ARRS Teams, utilising mental health transformation money outlined in the Spring Budget and Autumn Statement in 2023.
22. Work directly with clinicians in the Step Forward and ARRS Teams to promote the service and highlight the benefits of them referring into the service.
23. Provide visible and effective leadership to the new IPS service, including day to day line management of the Team Leader.
24. Be responsible for the quality of the Employment Support offer, ensuring robust governance is in place around Employment Support processes, and data entries onto the clinical system (Rio).
25. Provide monthly service reports to referring clinicians to enable them to see the benefit of the new service for their patients.
26. Support the Business and Innovation Lead to prepare and submit tenders for new IPS services to grow The Life Rooms portfolio.