Maternity & Neonatal Independent Senior Advocate

Maternity & Neonatal Independent Senior Advocate NHS Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin Integrated Care Board

The Independent Senior Advocate (ISA) helps parents-to-be, new parents and families to have a voice, be listened to and heard by their Maternity and Neonatal care providers.

ISAs can provide support to women and their families, navigating the healthcare system and providing advocacy when they have a concern about the care they are receiving. In particular, ISAs will be available to families attending follow up meetings with clinicians, where concerns about Maternity or Neonatal care are discussed, aiming to improve communication and support families in understanding and communicating what is important to them.

The ISA can support people navigate through formal complaints, serious incidents and health safety investigation branch processes where an adverse outcome has occurred. The ISA can also support families with unusual and complex needs in working with professionals to develop their personalised care plans, meeting individual needs and supporting safe care.

This role is funded by NHS England and initial guidance states that it would not be appropriate to employ currently practicing clinicians from Maternity Services / Trusts in Shropshire, Telford & Wrekin into this role as it would undermine the level of independence required. Therefore, we will not be expecting applications from clinicians that are currently working with organisations that provide maternity care in Shropshire, Telford & Wrekin.

Main duties of the job

• Provide leadership in ensuring the voice of the service user remains front and foremost in all referrals.
• Work with colleagues in the Shropshire, Telford & Wrekin LMNS to establish mechanisms to receive and record referrals from women and families where concerns have been expressed about their Maternity or Neonatal care.
• Manage a number of complex cases simultaneously and taking decisions independently on substantial casework. To establish and maintain systems to record details of each case referred for support.
• To act as a trusted intermediary between women and families and clinicians and the Maternity & Neonatal Trusts, aiming to break down barriers to being listened to and heard.
• Help women and families navigate complexity, signposting to appropriate sources of advice and support both within and external to the NHS where necessary.
• To work towards resolving concerns and brokering improvements early in the pathway, set out for example in Personalised Care and Support Plans, so that care better meets a woman's needs and there is less likely to be ongoing poor experience.
• To ensure that women and families are aware of their rights and options and explain the options open to them. Where necessary to help women and families navigate through formal complaints processes where an adverse outcome has occurred, signposting to other resources

About us

NHS Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin was created on 1 July 2022 and is responsible for planning and buying a wide range of health and care services for the whole of Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin. These include GP and primary care services, hospital care, community healthcare and mental health services. We also have a duty to monitor these services to ensure they provide a high level of care and are value for money. We are clinically-led and work closely with the 51 GP practices across the county. This means we can have closer links to our patients so we can develop more personalised local health services.

In return, we provide a supportive environment in which to learn and develop, with the opportunity to further your skills and career within an exciting and evolving environment. Joining our inclusive and innovative team comes with a range of benefits including flexible & agile working arrangements, pension scheme and generous annual leave allowance. With our training schemes and support networks, you will be empowered to play a leading role in the future of healthcare, whatever your specialism or interest. And as a member of NHS staff you will receive plenty of discounts too.

Job responsibilities

About the Role

The Midwifery Independent Senior Advocate (ISA) helps parents to be, new parents and families to be listened to and heard by their Maternity and Neonatal care providers. ISAs can provide support to women and their families, navigating the healthcare system and providing advocacy when they have a concern about the care they are receiving. In particular, ISAs will be available to families attending follow up meetings with clinicians, where concerns about Maternity or Neonatal care are discussed, aiming to break down barriers to being listened to and heard. The ISA can support people navigate throughformal complaints processes where an adverse outcome has occurred.

Key Job Specifics & Responsibilities

- Provide leadership in ensuring the voice of the service user remains front and foremost in all referrals.

Referrals

- Work with LMNS colleagues to establish mechanisms to receive and record referrals from women and families where concerns have been expressed about their Maternity or Neonatal care.

- Respond to referrals and be available to women and families, to join follow-up meetings with clinicians.- Build and understanding of the concerns expressed by women and families and reflect that understanding back to women and families to help them feel listened to.

- Manage a number of complex cases simultaneously and taking decisions independently on substantial casework. To establish systems to record details of each case referred for support.

- To work collaboratively with ISAs working in neighbouring areas to maximise availability to women and families.

Navigation

- To act as a trusted intermediary between women and families and clinicians and the Maternity & Neonatal Trust, aiming to break down barriers to being listened to and heard.

- Help women and families navigate complexity, signposting to appropriate sources of advice and support both within and external to the NHS where necessary.

- To work towards resolving concerns and brokering improvements early on in the pathway, set out for example in Personalised Care & Support Plans, so that care better meets a womans needs and there is less likely to be an ongoing poor experience.

- To ensure that women and families are aware of their rights and options and explain the options open to them, where necessary to help women and families navigate through formal complaints processes where an adverse outcome has occurred, signposting to other resources.

Governance and Reporting

- Regularly report to LMNS and Trust Level Boards, providing robust feedback on both individual events and trends, providing recommendations to improve service user experience and patient safety.

- Ensure that there are strong links with two-way feedback, between the ISA findings and clinical governance within Maternity. Establish regular reporting to the Quality and Safety Groups and other appropriate forums.

- Where necessary, and with the Senior Responsible Officer for the LMNS, escalate unresolved cases of concern, to Trust Boards and through the national network of ISAs.

- Prepare and present information and reports to LMNS and Trust level boards.

Data and Information

- Contribute to the evaluation of the Independent Senior Advocates maintaining and making available information about referrals from women and families, outcomes of case and monitoring data.

- Gather information on trends in cases, to share learning from those trends through NHS England regions and to the national network of Independent senior Advocates.

Stakeholders

- Build positive working relationships with senior clinical colleagues in the Trusts they will be working alongside including, Directors and Heads of Midwifery and senior obstetricians, to build trust and open communication.

- Develop active working relationships with the chair of the local Maternity Voices Partnership, to maximize the potential for collaborative working.

- Build and maintain effective working relationships with Trust Non-Exec Director, Maternity Safety Champions and with Patient Advice and Liaison Services (PALS).

Communication

- Communicates and presents highly complex information to a wide range of internal and external stakeholders. Where necessary, to have robust and challenging conversations with clinicians, advocating on women and families behalf.

- Contribute to providing information about the ISA role amongst local organisations, to ensure that women and families who need to access their service know their options.

- Develop effective communication with relevant local organisations (e.g. Healthwatch, local advocacy groups), to ensure their role is well understood, and to ensure that women and families from groups who are least likely to express concerns about their care feel more able to do so.

Equality and Diversity

- Recognise, respect and address the needs of service users who face particular barriers when seeking access to services, including those from minority backgrounds and those with protected characteristics.

Person Specification Qualifications & Education

• Educated to masters level or equivalent level of experience of working at a senior level.
• Advocacy qualification and counselling training, or equivalent level of experience.
• Evidence of Continued Professional Development (CPD)

Skills & Capabilities

• Able to communicate effectively at all levels (inc listening & hearing) and with compassion.
• Demonstrable experience of effective active listening.
• Demonstrable influencing skills - including at Board level
• Ability to work autonomously and to self-motivate
• Ability to recognise and overcome barriers on behalf of women and their families.
• Ability to prioritise conflicting and changing demands.
• Highly developed communication skills with the capability to analyse, review and make sense of highly complex, sensitive or contentious information.
• Demonstrable skills in presenting complex concepts and information which may include difficult and controversial issues.
• Ability to identify risks, anticipate issues and create solutions and to resolve problems.
• Ability to understand a broad range of complex information quickly and making decisions where opinions differ/no obvious solution.
• Ability to work without supervision, working to tight and often changing timescales.
• Experience of managing difficult and challenging conversations
• Evidence of planning and delivering programmes and projects and services on time.

Personal Style & Behaviour

• Commitment to and focused on quality, promotes high standards in all they do.
• Able to make a connection between their work and the benefit to patients and the public.
• Ability to operate in a value-driven style consistent with the values of the public services and specifically with the new organisational values
• Works across boundaries, looks for collective success, listens, involves, respects and learns from the contribution of others
• Values diversity and difference; operates with integrity and openness
• Works well with others, is positive and helpful, listens, involves, respects and learns from the contribution of others. Consistently looks to improve what they do, look for successful tried and tested ways of working, and also seeks out innovation.
• Actively develops themselves and supports others to do the same.
• Needs to have a thorough understanding of and commitment to equality of opportunity
• Self-awareness in teams of emotional intelligence, biases and personal triggers with cultural sensitivity and awareness.
• Values diversity and difference operates with integrity and openness.
• Embrace change, viewing it as an opportunity to learn and develop.
• Demonstrates honesty and integrity and promotes organisational values.
• Must be a car driver with a valid driving licence or have access to transport with appropriate business insurance in order to travel the to meet the needs of the service

Knowledge, Skills, Physical Skills & Training

• Thorough knowledge and understanding of Maternity and Neonatal services.
• Experience of addressing health inequalities
• Extensive experience of advocacy.
• Experience of working at a senior level and of influencing change
• Extensive knowledge of specialist areas acquired through post graduate diploma or equivalent experience or training plus further specialist knowledge.
• Evidence of post qualifying and continuing professional development.
• Must have an understanding of the background to and aims of current healthcare policy
• Have an appreciation of the relationship between the NHS England, Integrated Care Systems and individual provider organisations.
• Experience of building effective cross functional working relationships to drive organisational agenda.
• Evidence of complex relationship building with senior stakeholders
• Understanding of issues surrounding equality and diversity and of the differences between people.
• Experience of supporting those with birth trauma and of working in bereavement care
• Experience of leading or managing service improvement

Disclosure and Barring Service Check

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.

NHS Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin Integrated Care Board

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