Bi- Borough Urgent Community Response Pathway Lead

Job overview

The Community Independence Service (CIS) is a growing part of Intermediate Care. Through our Urgent Community Response pathway, we deliver admission avoidance support, providing timely, high-quality care in patients’ homes via a diverse multi-professional team.

We are seeking an experienced nurse/professional  who is passionate about patient care and thrives in a collaborative environment. This bi-borough role supports the Urgent Community Response pathway across Westminster and Kensington & Chelsea.

The post is ideal for someone creative, adaptable, and committed to ensuring patients receive the best care. Strong leadership skills are essential, as you will contribute to service delivery and support the wider multi-disciplinary team.

The successful candidate will be expected to work across both bases with guidance from the Borough Leads, Head of Service, and Clinical Lead. You will be jointly accountable to two managers, benefiting from their ongoing support.

We are committed to professional development, offering supervision, Personal Development Reviews, and opportunities to lead service and quality improvement projects. We provide excellent development prospects within a supportive, friendly, and forward-thinking team.

This is a demanding, specialist post. We recommend contacting us for an informal discussion or visiting one of our teams before applying.

Main duties of the job

This is a highly skilled clinical post requiring the post holder to manage clinical risk in a fast paced community environment.

The post holder will be responsible for the leadership of a borough-based clinical pathway for the urgent community response (nurses, paramedics and AHPs) and Home First Pathway having direct line management responsibility for clinicians in their pathway and professional responsibility for senior clinicians across the service as required.

The post holder will be responsible for ensuring that staff working within the Pathway provide effective assessment, planning, implementation and evaluation of care that meets professional and organisational quality standards.

The post holder will be responsible for ensuring that the team has adequate nursing and therapy staff rostered on duty with the appropriate skills to safely meet the needs of patients.

The post holder will undertake direct clinical work for an agreed proportion of their time, undertaking a complex clinical caseload and act as a role model for excellence in clinical care provision while providing clear professional clinical leadership.

The service operates 8.00 – 20.00, 7 days per week. The post holder will be required to participate in a monthly weekend day cover and management on call rota as appropriate.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

• To have overall responsibility for the safe and effective delivery of care to patients accepted into the service.
• Establish effective communication links with community colleagues providing planned care and specialist disease specific care, supporting integrated working to manage smooth hand over of care.
• To manage budgets effectively to own delegated level, actively participating in organisational and divisional budget monitoring arrangements.
• Be responsible for maintaining safe staffing levels in the service pathway, by monitoring rostering arrangements, minimising vacancies and leading on timely recruitment and selection processes.
• To ensure that all new staff in the pathway have a comprehensive induction and orientation to the service and that all staff have on-going personal development programmes.
• Manage the governance of the teams covering the investigation of complaints and incidents to ensure lessons learnt are shared and implemented.
• Manage the workforce planning in the teams, managing recruitment and selection of personnel and ongoing performance management including appraisals and objective setting.
• To manage the clinical performance of staff they directly line manage, ensuring that their interventions are commensurate with the required competency
• Responsible, with line management support for ensuring that the service pathway meets all Key Performance Indicators, CQUINS, and QIPP requirements.
• To develop and implement recovery plans should these be required, reporting progress to the senior management team.
• Take responsibility for plans/projects/programmes for own service area as delegated.
• To be responsible for maintaining and developing high performance in the clinical pathway by managing staff absence, performance and conduct in accordance with HR policy and good people management practices.
• Ensure that sickness absence information is recorded on a monthly basis via Trust absence reporting system in place.
• To instigate a schedule of minuted weekly staff meetings to ensure effective team communication, clinical excellence and staff support.
• Manage, analyse and interpret data associated with the team and make suggestions for improvements based on reported statistics and facts.
• To provide rapid and effective support to staff in order to solve problems, handle informal patient feedback and to convey difficult or contentious information in a sensitive and skilled manner

To communicate service information when required to own staff, management team and external agencies in an effective and professional manner.

• To represent own service area at relevant internal and external meetings in a professional and positive manner.
• To occasionally provide high quality clinical leadership and support to staff outside of own pathway where required.
• To undertake management duties in line with Trust values – Compassion, Respect Empowerment, Partnership.