Service Manager Commissioning

About Us

If you are thinking why join West Sussex, we are happy to confirm there is a supportive culture that is second to none. Employees are genuinely valued, respected and there is an emphasis on work life balance. Hybrid working helps us deliver a great service and our employees enjoy the flexibility this gives to fit around their home lives. For this role the team work flexibly in offices across the county as required, and work from home for the rest of the week.

This senior role sits within the Long-life Services and Mental Health Commissioning Team, part of West Sussex County Council's Adults Social Care Directorate however will work across all customer groups. The post will work with a range of care service providers, statutory partners including the NHS, and internal teams such as children's social care to commission services that support people with care needs to live the lives they want to lead.

The co-produced Adult Social Care Strategy 'A Life You Want to Lead' launched in 2022 and focuses on delivering a person-centred and strengths-based approach to empower people to lead a fulfilling and active life. This role is pivotal in ensuring that the 'Life you Want to Lead' strategy and intentions is based on a broad and deep understanding of current and future needs and demand, is aligned with council priorities and is built around the agenda for close partnership working, particularly with the NHS, the community and the voluntary sector.

Within the role, you will build positive relationships with a wide range of senior stakeholders and partners, working to improve quality and outcomes for individuals, achieve value for money and ensure the best use of resources. You will lead a team to ensure that the right services and solutions are available to people across the county to meet the care and support needs of our residents. You will bring experience and knowledge of commissioning to help innovate and create care and support options for the future. You will also lead and ensure that we co-produce future care options with those with lived experience and their family or carer representatives.

"I recently joined WSCC in the LLS Commissioning team, this was a huge and exciting step for me full of unknowns and new challenges. WSCC is a large organisation with many facets, however there is always someone happy to lend a friendly hand to help and support you find your way around and through the processes of the organisation. Since joining, I have made a positive difference to our communities and the people we support."

About The Job

Salary: £64,682 to £68,330 per annum (HAY C)
Working Pattern: Full time, 37 hours per week
Contract Type: Permanent
Location: Worthing
Interview Date: 22nd October

We're looking for a Service Manager to lead life-long and mental health commissioning activity for adult social care.

As a Service Manager you will lead a team that focusses on ensuring that social care solutions are available across the county for residents of West Sussex focused on life-long and working age mental health.

You will set the direction on commissioning work streams and manage complex programmes and projects in this area of work. The role will focus on enabling the Council to implement its strategic intentions and meeting current need and future demand, and ensuring West Sussex has a care market providing a range of high-quality services and solutions for the residents of West Sussex.

The key responsibility of this role will be to provide leadership to commissioning plans to improve quality and outcomes for individuals, achieve value for money and ensure the best use of resources. You will build positive relationships with a wide range of senior stakeholders and partners. The role will involve reporting and presenting regularly to a range of senior people, governance boards and bodies, working with and providing reports and information to Cabinet Members and committees.

You will set and drive the approach to strategic commissioning services for people with working age mental health needs and life-long conditions including physical and sensory impairments, disability and autism . You will lead on the identification of needs and gaps in local provision, identify options for, and support the implementation of solutions, and review the outcomes and performance. It will also involve working closely in partnership, co-producing plans and projects, consulting, engaging and developing relationships with organisations across the health and social care system, and providing expert advice both internally to the Council and externally to our system partners.

You will need to be able to travel independently across the county to meet with providers and partners as required and the role involves long periods of mental demands, large scale projects and programmes of work and a requirement to deliver to timescales and budget.

Experience and Skills

The following key skills, qualifications and experience are the short listing criteria so please ensure you cover how you meet each of them within your application.

Key Skills:

1. Ability to define service-wide issues, identify strategic solutions and to make sound pragmatic problem-solving decisions, which will have a wider service impact and could be business critical. This will include the ability to tackle difficult problems of a technical, professional, resource or people related nature using existing policies, procedures, knowledge, expertise and judgement to devise approaches.
2. Ability to give detailed expert, technical and management advice that enables compliant solutions to be implemented and supports senior leaders and managers to make sound evidence-based decisions.
3. Ability to design and lead programmes of change that challenge existing practices, processes and activities and identify and deliver solutions.
4. Effective and strategically focused research and planning skills to construct creative solutions to ensure the successful delivery of service provision working on a time horizon of a number of years.
5. Effective programme and project management skills and a project focused approach which evidence an ability to establish plans, set & monitor objectives/timescales and lead a team to deliver accordingly, meeting planned activities, projects and reviews. Enabling delivery to time and budget.
6. Sound partnership and highly developed written and verbal communication skills (including co-production) in order to persuade, negotiate or influence within and outside the organisation to achieve challenging/sensitive objectives and ensure implementation of solutions.
7. Effective people management and performance management skills with the ability to lead and inspire, providing direction and support to individuals and teams.

Please see the job description for the full list of qualifications and experience.

Further Information

We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults. This post is subject to an enhanced DBS check, 5 years referencing and a health check.

West Sussex County Council is an equal opportunities employer committed to promoting an environment that is inclusive and free from all forms of unlawful or unfair discrimination and values the diversity of its people. We actively welcome applications from people of all backgrounds.