Interim Associate Director of Clinical Governance and Risk

Job overview

South West London and St George’s Mental Health NHS Trust are seeking an Interim Associate Director of Clinical Governance & Risk to provide strategic leadership across all aspects of quality governance, patient safety, and risk management.

This recruitment is to provide additional senior leadership capacity during a temporary period of absence within the team, whilst the existing post holder has additional caring responsibilities. We are committed to maintaining the continuity, stability, and quality of our governance functions, and this role will help ensure our services — and the staff who deliver them — continue to receive the support they need.

You will be an experienced senior leader with:

• Master’s level education or equivalent expertise.
• Extensive experience in clinical governance, quality, and risk management within a complex healthcare environment.
• Strong working knowledge of CQC regulatory frameworks.
• A track record of delivering successful quality improvement and organisational learning.
• Highly developed leadership, communication, negotiation, and analytical skills.
• Experience working closely with patients, carers, and service user involvement groups.
• The ability to challenge, influence, and lead change at all levels.

A clinical background, mental health experience, and training in LEAN/continuous improvement are desirable but not essential.

Main duties of the job

In this interim role you will support the following responsibilities: -.

• Oversee Trust compliance with regulatory standards, including the Care Quality Commission.
• Lead the development, delivery, and monitoring of the Quality Strategy and Quality Account.
• Manage and provide strategic direction to key teams including Patient Safety, Compliance, Risk Management, Safeguarding, Mental Health Act Office, and Patient Experience & Engagement.
• Ensure systems for incident reporting, serious incident investigations, and organisational learning are robust and drive quality improvement.
• Develop and oversee proactive patient experience, complaints, and carer engagement mechanisms.
• Work in close partnership with Executive Directors, Senior Leaders, clinicians, service users, and external stakeholders.
• Undertake a series of projects/audits related to clinical governance and risk.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Please see job description for full details of main duties and responsibilities.

All public facing roles require a proportionate level of English language proficiency for written and verbal communication and the Trust is required to verify results of certain English language competency tests relied upon. When the fluency duty is met by the provision of a sign language interpreter, the interpreter should be registered with the National Registers of Communication Professionals working with Deaf and Deafblind People (NRCPD).