Head of Emergency Preparedness

This job is brought to you by Jobs/Redefined, the UK's leading over-50s age inclusive jobs board.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

On behalf of the Chief Operating Officer, the post holder will: -

1. Be responsible for ensuring that the Christie NHS Foundation Trust is compliant with the statutory obligations under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 and its associated regulations.

2. Lead on planning and training and exercising work associated with
- Emergency Preparedness, Resilience and Response (EPRR)
- Business continuity
- System resilience

3. Represent the Trust in a broad multi-agency environment and manage relevant multi-agency project and workstreams, liaising with TCFT clinical and corporate services, commissioners and other Health Care Providers and multi-agency partners ensuring that TCFT is fully involved in/and supportive of health economy resilience planning and response.

4. Ensure TCFT's interests are fully represented and advanced.

5. Ensure strong communications are maintained between TCFT and its stakeholders.

6. Lead on the development and coordination of all aspects of major incident and emergency planning for the trust and its managed and contracted services. The post holder will also facilitate and support the trusts response to major incidents and emergencies as appropriate, acting as a specialist knowledge resource in all aspects of emergency planning offering detailed advice across the trust and external partner organisations.

7. Manage EPRR corporate processes to provide assurance to the Board that it complies with relevant legislation and guidance as identified by the NHS Core standards for EPRR.

8. Lead research and develop programs to contribute to the advancement of emergency planning and a health context and act as a source of expertise and professional point of contact on Emergency Planning and Business continuity for the whole organisation.

9. Develop and maintain appropriate systems, processes, and policies so that the Trust is fit for purpose relating to the emergency planning and Business continuity.

10. Work with key managers to develop, produce and update business continuity plans materials and documentation e.g., plans, emergency response procedures, call lists, action cards

11. Ensure that there are suitable arrangements in place for the trust to quickly establish a command-and-control room (major incident room) as needed, and this is embedded into local localities as required.

12. Work closely with clinical and corporate services to ensure plans, policies, action cards, training and supporting infrastructures and exercised to enable the trust to effectively respond to the following: -
- An internal or external major incident
- Flood
- Heat wave
- Extreme weather conditions
- Pandemic/ flu
- Lock down
- Site specific service, geographical hotspot or trust wide business continuity risks or incidents

13. Lead and coordinate the development, monitoring and updating of Business impact assessments (BIA) / Business Continuity Plans (BCPs) across the trust.

14. Develop and contribute to professional relationships within the Organisation, with commissioners and NHS funded organisations and multi-agency partners that facilitate the continual development of EPRR arrangements e.g., local resilience forums.

15. Ensure appropriate representation at local health resilience partnerships (LHRP), Local resilience and their associated sub-groups and workstreams.

16. Ensure that the trust major incident plan contains effective mechanisms to facilitate joint working within the relevant local NHS economies and provide an effective NHS response to any Major incident or business continuity risk affecting the trust.

17. Ensure that the plans are compatible with those of the emergency services, local council and other partner agencies.

18. Identify national, regional and local policy changes and developments which impact the trust, both direct and indirect, and translate these into operational practice as required.

19. Work closely with estates, IT and Human Resources, switchboard, and communications team to ensure that all communications systems and equipment needed for emergency response is checked regularly, tested and fit for purpose and responsibilities for emergency planning and business continuity is understood by target audiences.

20. Plan and implement desktop scenarios to test local emergency plans at least annually and ensure the lessons learned from the desk top scenario are incorporated into the relevant planning arrangements.

21. Liaise with and support Directors and Divisional Leadership Teams and other senior managers in the trust to ensure they are aware of their responsibilities in coordination and delivery of NHS services in the event of a major / critical incident.

22. Assist with crisis management in the event of a business interruption.

23. Develop and implement a review and governance framework for the revision and updating of the trust emergency plans; identifying and enlisting staff from across all divisions; with clear lines of accountability.

24. Lead responsibility for ensuring that all communications during an exercise are retained and analysed, for preparing reports are appropriate, for arranging debriefs and review sessions as appropriate and for submission to legal entities if required.

TRAINING AND EDUCATION CO-ORDINATION

25. Develop, manage, and coordinate delivery of a rolling three- year test and exercise schedule (including regular communication tests and control center establishment tests) to develop major incident and emergency response to management skills and awareness across the organisation, ensure staff at all levels and in all sites and services, take all available opportunities to test their response capacity and to identify learning and improvements needed in response plans.

26. Lead responsibility for developing and coordinating the training of key trust staff and those of our contracted services with regard to major incidents and emergency planning and response.

27. Undertake the identification of training needs and delivery of appropriate training programs to ensure that Christie staff understand and are competent to perform their major incident and emergency planning responsibilities.

28. Ensure that the appropriate emergency planning training is made available to relevant staff of the trust and co-ordinate the involvement of these staff in their emergency planning and responses roles.

29. Be an educational resource in relation to emergency planning and business continuity for induction and update the training programs to assist in ensuring these reflect the needs of the organisation.

GENERAL PROFESSIONAL DUTIES

30. Provide expert advice, information and support to senior managers, clinicians and committees on matters relating to the remit and ensure he trust is kept informed of related national and regional strategic issues.

31. Undertake personal development training in order to enhance skills/expertise and keep up to date with the national guidance and best practice.

32. Contribute to the design, implementation and monitoring of internal indicators and metrics which enable the trust to understand and improve its performance in relation to quality, risk, business continuity, safety, and compliance.

33. Due to the nature of resilience planning and response, the post holder may, on occasions, be required to work outside of normal office hours and will be required to travel on a regular basis.

Person specification

Qualifications

Essential criteria

• First Degree or equivalent
• Management Qualification/leadership training
• In depth professional knowledge in EPRR
• Expected to maintain, improve and update professional knowledge and skills and participate in continuing Professional Development

Desirable criteria

• Health emergency planning diploma
• Training qualification or equivalent vocational experience.

Experience

Essential criteria

• Experience of policy writing and implementation
• Experience of managing multiple projects and completing them to strict deadlines.
• Experience of change management
• Project management experience
• Experience of interpreting information (both written and verbal) and feeding back in an accessible form.
• Experience of organising workshop and events
• Experience of delivering effective presentations
• Experience of designing and delivering training sessions.

Skills

Essential criteria

• Demonstrates principles and behaviours described within the Christie Values
• Ability to motivate others to work to the agreed standards and frameworks.
• Innovative and creative, ability to interpret and implement national and local strategy and policy drivers relevant to EPRR
• High level of interpersonal skills both written and verbal, persuasive and facilitative.
• Strong leadership and motivational skills - able to work effectively with a diverse team located on multiple sites
• Ability to communicate effectively with individuals at all levels and across agencies
• Well-developed political awareness, influencing, negotiation and conflict resolution skills
• A team player who can work effectively with clinical and managerial colleagues
• Highly developed analytical skills and the ability to deduce key points from highly complex data in order to make decisions

Knowledge

Essential criteria

• Demonstrate an understanding of NHS emergency planning frameworks and requirements.
• Good knowledge of governance and compliance processes
• Able to plan, organise and delivery trust-wide projects and training.
• Knowledge of developing business cases and proposals and ability to present these to all management staff.

Values

Essential criteria

• Able to demonstrate the Christie values & behaviours

Other

Essential criteria

• A corporate player, able to successfully link strategy and operations
• Assertive, confident and able to work under own initiative, emotionally resilient.
• Ability to function under pressure and meet deadlines whilst maintaining a high quality of work
• Ability to participate in duty manager rota.
• Satisfactory health screening

The closing date for this post may be extended if there are insufficient applicants or brought forward if there is a high volume of applicants.

Application Information - If you have not heard from us within four weeks of the closing date, I regret that on this occasion your application will have been unsuccessful.

Sponsorship Information - We are an approved sponsoring organisation. Applications will be considered from applicants requiring sponsorship alongside all other applications. Please be aware, not all roles are eligible for sponsorship. You can review the list of eligible role and requirements on the government website.

Pre-Employment Checks - To confirm your suitability for the role, we will carry out pre-employment checks in line with NHS Employment Check Standards. These include:

• Identity verification
• Right to work check
• Disclosure and barring service (DBS)/Criminal record check (dependent on role, payment of this will be the applicants responsibility)
• Professional registration and/or qualification check
• Occupational health assessment
• Employment history and reference validation

All applicants external to The Christie NHS Foundation Trust will be required to provide their HMRC employment history to cover the most recent three years employment. This information will used to validate employment history and references.

If you require sponsorship, we will assess your eligibility based on current government guidance. If the role is not eligible and you cannot demonstrate your right to work, your conditional offer may be withdrawn.

If You're Offered the Role - you will be agreeing to The Christie NHS Foundation Trust transferring the information contained in this application to its preferred applicant management system. If you are offered a job information will also be transferred into the national NHS Electronic Staff Records system. Please note, all communication regarding your application will be made via email, please ensure you check your junk/spam folders as emails are sometimes filtered there.

The Inter-Authority Transfer (IAT) process is a critical and beneficial component of ESR and will form part of the recruitment process. In the event that you are successful following interview your previous NHS employment data, if applicable will be transferred from your current / most recent employer.

Sponsorship Information - We are an approved sponsoring organisation. Applications will be considered from applicants requiring sponsorship alongside all other applications. Please be aware, not all roles are eligible for sponsorship. You can review the list of eligible role and requirements on the government website.

No Smoking Policy - You should be aware the Trust operates a No Smoking Policy and therefore employees are not permitted to smoke at work.

Additional Information - We want to ensure that everyone who works at the Christie or uses our services is welcomed, valued and treated with dignity and respect. The Christie values diversity and is committed to ensuring equal opportunities for all and fair representation across the organisation at all levels. In support of these commitments, we particularly welcome applications from Black, Asian and other ethnic minority people and people with disabilities for this post. Appointment will be only on merit.

We are committed to creating a balanced and diverse workforce. As such we welcome and encourage applications from people of all backgrounds. Together we will foster inclusion and tackle inequity and health inequalities in cancer care.

As users of the disability confident scheme, we guarantee to interview all disabled applicants who meet the minimum criteria for the vacancy.

The Christie NHS Foundation Trust is committed to the highest standards of ethical conduct and integrity in all our activities. We have a zero-tolerance approach to modern slavery in any of its forms, including slavery, servitude, forced or compulsory labour, and human trafficking. We are fully committed to acting ethically and with transparency in all our business dealings and relationships, and to implementing and enforcing effective systems and controls to ensure modern slavery is not taking place anywhere in our organisation or supply chains.

Employer certification / accreditation badges

Applicant requirements

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service.

Documents to download

• Job Description and Person Specification (PDF, 317.2KB)
• The Christie Values and Behaviours (PDF, 919.5KB)
• Strategy Brochure (PDF, 1.0MB)
• Travel to The Christie (PDF, 3.8MB)