West Sussex Cds People Participation Lead

We are thrilled to advertise for a dedicated People Participation Lead working across teams and services within West Sussex Care and Delivery Service (CDS)

The CDS provides secondary mental health services across West Sussex. This includes 3 adult acute hospitals, 1 specialist acute dementia unit, 2 rehabilitation and recovery units, 8 adult mental health community mental health teams, 5 dementia and older peoples mental health teams and a range of other specialists services such as eating disorder services, group treatment, assertive outreach and community rehab services.

We are looking to welcome a motivated, passionate and assertive individuals to our leadership team to lead on people participation across these services. Applicants should have a keen interest in service improvement and in supporting and facilitating positive developments, be an effective communicator and be able to work proactively. You will need to be adept at relationship building with a diverse range of people from across the service internally and externally and be able to create and maintain an encouraging and understanding environment for the team of service users and carers. You should have excellent organisational skills and be able to manage a varying workload efficiently.

To protect the health and safety of our staff/workers, patients, and those attending our sites, we encourage our workforce to get fully vaccinated against COVID

This post will lead on all aspects of planning, delivery and review of service user and carer participation in the West Sussex CDS and establish positive relationships across the directorate or specialist area and support and maintain effective communication with services, service users and carers.

This role will require an innovative, collaborative approach in order to create and facilitate new bespoke participation networks and activities across West Sussex CDS services

The post holder will work strategically across the directorate to develop and implement a service user and carer strategy that supports the broad participation agenda as well as project manage a variety of participation workstreams ensuring that service user and carer participation is co-ordinated and in line with local and trust wide strategies.

To advise and share practice as a locality-based Participation lead, so that services can embed participation in their delivery and they will contribute to the development needs of staff members in this aspect of their work.

Promoting and helping with the development of a culture that is truly socially inclusive, and that values participation, equality and diversity is another task for this role.

Whilst this role will be located in West Sussex CDS there will also be a clear and vital link with the central People Participation Team.

Our trust commitment is to be an organisation that puts the involvement and experience of people using our services and their families, friends and carers at the heart of anything that we do.

**In order to achieve this, we aim to ensure that**:
People who use our services and their families, friends and carers are involved in our service changes and improvements that we make

Our committees, interviews and significant meetings have experts by experience representatives, who are as equal and valued members (both own lived experience and that of being a family member, friend or carer)

The experience and views of people who use our services and their families, friends and carers is an integral part of how we make decisions, and part of how we evaluate how we are doing and also influence how we make changes and improvements

In order to fulfil these ambitions and deliver the best participation services we have a team of people in place to support this.

For more information on working for Sussex Partnership NHS Trust please visit Careers at Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust
- To identify and link up existing service user and carer participation activities across West Sussex CDS
- To develop and maintain a network of service users and friends, family members or carers linked to West Sussex CDS.
- To develop and initiate participation activities, including Working Together Groups, conferences and events that allow us to meet the needs of all of our stakeholders; this will require a range of face to face and online forums.
- To support the development of a local West Sussex participation strategy (based on the Trust-wide Participation Strategy 2020-23); to include baseline expectations of all staff members around participation and areas of focus for the future.
- To co-lead and facilitate a West Sussex CDS Participation Steering Group
- Work with the local leadership team to review the meeting structures in West Sussex CDS and seek to map where EBEs are already being placed in addition to highlighting where there are opportunities for further EBE participation.
- To work proactively and collaboratively with clinical teams to identify challenges around em