Job overview
This senior role provides leadership and specialist expertise within the organisation. It involves helping ensure patient / service user, carer and family engagement, experience and co-production are at the heart of how we work and provide services.
Main duties of the job
The role involves being a specialist adviser, a champion for continuous improvement and an effective organiser who delivers tangible results with clear outcomes.
Specific responsibilities include:
- leadership responsibility for a range of specialist functions and work programmes • developing bold, innovative and creative ideas - and putting them into practice - in order to support the organisation's drive to continuously improve quality • ensuring we continuously learn from best practice - within the NHS and beyond - about how to improve our practice, procedures and policies.
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
Lead an effective, strategic approach to the ongoing development of patient, carer and family engagement, experience and co-production. This includes our peer support workforce, Recovery College and Experts by Experience programme.
Continuously develop our engagement, experience and co-production approach by working collaboratively with patients, carers, families, local communities, partner organisations and staff across the organisation.
Help drive and deliver the Trust's approach to Patient Carer and Race Equality Framework, harnessing this as an opportunity to improve.
Keep abreast national policy developments and findings from independent reports which relate to engagement, experience and co-production, ensuring that the Trust's approach is high quality, innovative and at the forefront of national best practice - both within the NHS and beyond.
Constructively challenge the status quo and traditional ways of working - within the organisation and the wider health and care system - to help ensure the voice of people who use our services is considered, heard and responded to.
Maintain strategic relations with statutory and voluntary sector partners in order to develop strategies which support people with mental health problems, learning disabilities and neurodiversity to gain meaningful employment.
Forge strong working relationships with members of the Executive team and other senior leaders.
Contribute to the development and delivery of the organisation's approach to quality.
Assess service delivery plans for each department under their remit and formulate improvement strategies where opinions may differ. This will include the development of co-produced annual/bi-annual strategies and work plans.
Person specification
Qualifications
Essential
- Educated to master's degree level or equivalent experience.
- Evidence of strong and recent commitment to continued development – through study or alternatives.
- Evidence of significant relevant professional development.
- Proven ability to perform at strategic level as a senior leader.
Knowledge/Experience
Essential
- Proven track record of working with service users, carers / families to improve service delivery and experience / outcomes
- Understanding and experience of the tools, methods and approaches for creating the conditions to improve the experience of the local communities served by the Trust.
- Demonstrable understanding of organisational change, development and culture.
- Experience of working across a range of multicultural and diverse communities.
- Experience of developing, managing and operationalising change management and improvement programmes
- Experience of undertaking regular complex audits, using research methodology, to identify and enact areas of improvement
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Applying for this NHS job
This advert is for Associate Director of Experience and Engagement with Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust in Worthing, South East, England. It is listed as a Band 8 Manager and corporate role. The advertised salary is £79,504 - £91,609 Per annum. The contract type is Permanent. The application deadline is 29 Jul 2026.
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