Clinical Excellence Lead

Salary: £65,000
Closing Date: Sunday 9th November 2025.

Are you ready to champion clinical excellence in a place where values truly matter?

At Belong, we live and breathe our values every day - creating vibrant communities where colleagues feel supported, empowered, and inspired.

As our Clinical Excellence Lead, you'll work in close partnership with village teams to embed clinical excellence into everyday practice, driving quality improvement and nurturing a culture of continuous learning. This is a unique opportunity to lead with heart and purpose, influencing care standards across all our villages.

Key Objectives

• Champion clinical excellence and infection prevention by embedding Belong Values into everyday practice and consistently modelling safe, person-centred, evidence-based care.
• Embed regulatory and clinical governance frameworks across all villages, ensuring CQC, UKHSA, NMC and Health & Social Care Act standards are consistently understood, applied and evidenced in daily practice.
• Ensure consistency and safety in clinical delivery and infection control, identifying strengths, risks and innovations that position Belong as a sector leader in dementia and nursing care.
• Provide clinical coaching, mentorship and practical support to Village Nurse Managers, Admiral Nurses and wider teams, enabling them to confidently implement best practice and sustain improvements.
• Lead the capture, analysis and dissemination of clinical learning from incidents, infection outbreaks, audits and safeguarding reviews, ensuring improvements are not just recorded but embedded and assured.
• Act as the organisational expert for clinical matters, providing authoritative guidance on evidence-based practice, regulatory compliance, and sector developments to ensure Belong remains at the forefront of clinical excellence and innovation.
• Lead on infection prevention and control (IPC) across all Belong villages, ensuring full compliance with UKHSA guidance, Health & Social Care Act regulations and CQC standards.
• Conduct proactive infection control walkarounds, outbreak readiness reviews and post-incident learning sessions.
• Ensure consistent implementation of PPE, environmental hygiene, equipment decontamination and waste management protocols.
• Monitor clinical practice against the CQC Single Assessment Framework, NMC Code of Conduct, NICE guidelines and Belong policies.
• Support Village Nurse Managers in the completion of clinical governance reports, ensuring these are analytical rather than descriptive.
• Lead or contribute to clinical elements of the Belong Audit Framework, validating evidence and ensuring actions are closed effectively.
• Provide direct line management and supervision to Admiral Nurses, ensuring their specialist input is aligned to strategy and delivering measurable impact.
• Provide one-to-one and group clinical coaching to Village Nurse Managers and nursing teams, focusing on high-risk areas such as falls, infection control and safeguarding.
• Role model calm, values-led leadership in all situations, including high-pressure or escalation scenarios.
• Lead first-stage clinical learning reviews following incidents, audits or infection outbreaks, identifying patterns and recommending actions.
• Ensure that lessons learned are not only recorded but embedded into systems, training, life plans and/or policy revisions.
• Collaborate with quality and operational leads to feed emerging themes into organisational action plans.
• Support the Head of Quality in developing and implementing clinical and dementia strategies, ensuring they translate into practical and measurable delivery.
• Review clinical and IPC policies for clarity, relevance and implementation gaps, recommending structured improvements.
• Identify and evaluate new clinical tools, technologies and sector innovations that can improve safety, efficiency or assurance.
• Build relationships with NHS clinical networks, academic partners, local IPC teams and sector bodies to strengthen external assurance.
• Represent the senior operations team at the Quality & Safety Committee in relation to clinical matters - providing expert input on clinical performance, risk, and assurance, and ensuring operational priorities are reflected in strategic quality improvement initiatives.
• Represent Belong at relevant forums, sharing examples of good practice where appropriate.

General Responsibilities

• Maintain confidentiality of all clinical and organisational information, applying professional discretion when handling sensitive incidents, safeguarding matters or health data.
• Ensure accurate and timely completion of clinical records, governance reports and regulatory documentation, in line with CQC, NMC and organisational requirements.
• Attend and constructively contribute to relevant meetings, including infection control reviews, clinical governance forums and sector partnership networks.
• Take ownership of personal clinical development, maintaining up-to-date knowledge of infection prevention, dementia care, regulation and innovation.
• Adhere to all Belong policies, procedures and professional standards, ensuring consistency of clinical and infection control practice across villages.
• Act as a clinical role model and mentor, supporting colleagues to build confidence, uphold standards and deliver safe, person-centred care.
• Undertake any other reasonable duties within the scope of the role, particularly during escalation or outbreak situations, to ensure safety and governance continuity

• Registered General Nurse with current NMC registration
• Evidence of post-registration clinical leadership or specialist qualifications (e.g., IPC, dementia care, safeguarding)
• NVQ 5 in Leadership and Management (or equivalent qualification/experience).
• Good experience in clinical leadership within adult social care, care home, or community nursing settings
• Demonstrable success in leading clinical improvement initiatives and embedding evidence-based practice.
• Demonstrable experience in infection prevention and control, including outbreak management and audit
• In-depth understanding of clinical governance, regulatory frameworks and standards
• Proven expertise in infection prevention and control (IPC), including outbreak management and audit processes
• Strong commitment to continuous improvement and customer-focused outcomes.
• Proven experience of embedding governance and quality frameworks in practice.
• Experience of analysing audits, outcome data, and feedback to evidence improvement.
• Understanding of the needs of older people and the wider health and social care market.
• Excellent communication and influencing skills, both written and verbal, with the ability to engage confidently at all levels.

As a leading social care provider we're proud to be a place where people love to work. From our inclusive culture to our commitment to wellbeing and development, we're building something special and we'd love you to be part of it.