Strategic Lead for Care Education and Workforce

Acorns Children's Hospice Trust have an exciting opportunity for a Strategic Lead for Care Education and Workforce to join our Senior Leadership Team. For this key new role, we’re looking for someone to lead on the creation and delivery of the Care Workforce Strategy working in partnership with our other Senior Leaders.  The successful candidate will play an important role in ensuring that we have the right people with the right skills in the right place to meet the needs of children and families requiring Acorns services now and, in the future.

This is an agile role with opportunities to work from home as well as working across our three hospices.

Established in 1988, we are a registered charity, based in the West Midlands. We care for babies, children and young people up to 18 years and support to their families. Our teams provide care services for the life limited or life threatened children across our region who meet our referral criteria. A majority of the children and young people that we help are not expected to reach adulthood and require specialist care 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We also offer ongoing bereavement support to families.

About the Role

We recognise that our workforce is critical in providing our essential care services, therefore this role is focused on the development of our teams delivering both our clinical and wider care services.  The postholder will ensure that our workforce has the right education, learning and training and are skilled and confident in delivery of specialist care and support.  It will involve assessing our current workforce needs and creating and implementing an effective strategy to ensure that our services are impactful, effective, and child/family centred. This plan will be influenced and guided by the overall strategy of our Director of Care and her Senior Care Leadership Team.

You’ll work with our Care Management teams to embed clinical and wider care education into the core of the Acorns strategy and day-to-day care services.  You’ll lead our Care Education team in the delivery of learning within a clinical competency framework that adapts to the changing needs of the children receiving our services and reflects advances in evidence-based clinical practice. Learning will be delivered using a variety of media including digital resources and face-to-face.

You’ll identify innovative development pathways for clinical teams, maximising the opportunities offered through apprenticeship funding, higher education partnerships and other funding channels.

About You

The postholder will be educated to master’s degree level or above in clinical or educational course areas.  You’ll be a registered nurse or have a professional healthcare qualification.  You may have experience working as a Clinical Nurse Educator, Specialist Nurse Trainer, Head of Children’s Specialist Care, or a healthcare lecturer with clinical experience. As education is a key part of the role, we’ll expect you to have a training or teaching qualification or equivalent experience and time spent working within a learning and development environment.

You should have experience of working with children with complex care and specialist palliative care needs along with their families and should also be able to demonstrate evidence of workforce development within a healthcare setting.  You’ll be able to demonstrate that you’re passionate about collaborative working, seeking to build sustainable long-term relationships with higher education and NHS providers in order to futureproof our services and the support we offer to children and families. 

You will have a thorough knowledge of safeguarding practices and legislation, using your expertise to ensure employees across the organisation are supported in adhering to safeguarding policies.

What we offer

• Salary of £43,000 to £48,000 per annum
• 37.5 hours per week
• Agile working
• 262.5 hours (35 days) holiday per annum
• Car allowance
• Employee discounts from leading retailers
• Employee gym discount scheme
• Bike-to-Work scheme
• Generous contribution to group personal pension plan or continuation of current NHS pension scheme
• NHS pension scheme life assurance or Acorns group life assurance scheme

You need to be eligible to work in the UK to be considered for this role.  Any successful candidate will be subject to an enhanced DBS check for children.

If you have any questions, please contact us at recruitment@acorns.org.uk