Head of Wellbeing

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About Us

The King's community is dedicated to the service of society. King's Strategic Vision 2029 sets out our vision for the future, shaped around five priority areas: educate to inspire and improve; research to inform and innovate; serve to shape and transform; a civic university at the heart of London; and an international community that services the world. Our ambitious Education Strategy sets out the actions that we must take to transform how we teach, how and where our students learn and how we support them during their time with us.

The Student Wellbeing team is a cross-institutional, faculty-based student support team, organised on a 'hub and spoke' basis with faculty-based staff who are supported and coordinated by specialist teams in Student Support & Wellbeing Services.

The purpose of the team is to triage on a variety of presenting issues, including wellbeing, mental health support, Support to Study and fitness to practice as appropriate, student of concern, safeguarding, harassment and bullying.

The team also support the wider institution in embedding systems and practices that enhance student wellbeing.

We are part of the Students & Education Directorate, a collection of wide-ranging professional services in place to support King's students and their education. As a directorate we manage the student lifecycle from application to graduation and beyond, to ensure a coherent and seamless student experience and effective administrative processes, working closely with King's faculties to do so.

About The Role

The Head of Wellbeing will lead and manage a team, or be a subject matter expert, in the key operational service area of Wellbeing, ensuring the senior team, and wider Directorate, are fully supported with effective processes and systems across a wide range of business and operational workstreams.

Head of Service and/or Senior Managers have operational responsibility for a defined portfolio of education and student professional services, as:

• A departmental lead within the Students and Education Directorate; or
• Project/programme/departmental lead within an academic faculty; or
• the lead of defined divisional-wide initiatives

Heads of/Senior Managers work within and across teams and functions, engaging with a wide range of colleagues across King's. They contribute and lead on activities which positively impact the student experience. This includes ensuring:

• Close working with their Associate Director, and across organisational boundaries, to identify and action opportunities to improve efficiency and consistency of service (or project) delivery
• Efficient resource utilisation and organisation of work resources within their department (or project)
• Proactive engagement with service users and stakeholders to facilitate mutually effective working relationships
• Their department (or project) embeds a culture of service, transparency and continuous improvement

Heads of /Senior Managers will have an understanding of the priorities, cultures and pressures of a research-led university and of academic processes and the structure of the academic year.

The Head of Student Wellbeing leads on the strategically delivering of high-quality support to students alongside a wide network of university colleagues. This includes the management of the team of wellbeing advisers based centrally and in faculty.

Wellbeing Advisers will also be able to offer guidance to Personal Tutors and Senior Tutors, where students are experiencing difficulties, and to support signposting to specialist services.

The successful candidate will be responsible for managing this fast paced, dynamic and strategically important team.

The successful candidate will need to ensure effective prevention, reporting, support and wellbeing training initiatives for colleagues both within and external to the service.

The successful candidate must understand the current context of pressures and concerns in relation to student wellbeing and the complexities these can bring across a diverse student body.

The Student Wellbeing team oversaw more than 5,000 cases in academic year 2023-24. The successful candidate must feel confident in their ability to manage a fast-paced team and provide support to the Faculty Wellbeing Advisers as they deliver their work.

We encourage applications from candidates who have experience from both within and outside of the Higher Education sector where they can demonstrate the skills needed to succeed in this role.

This is a full time post, and you will be offered an a fixed term contract until 28/11/2025

This 12 month fixed term contract is being advertised for a shorter period than usual as we need to fill this position urgently to ensure the smooth running of our Wellbeing Team.

The Wellbeing Team is a crucial part of our support services for students, and its effectiveness relies on a full team.

We are looking for candidates who can start as soon as possible to minimize disruption to our team and the support we provide to students.

About You

To be successful in this role, we are looking for candidates to have the following skills and experience:

Essential criteria

1. Relevant work experience and/or education: We think a wide range of different work and educational experiences could support you to be successful in this role. Relevant educational experiences might include higher education in a related discipline, professional qualifications or other training
2. Ability to engage in collaborative working across King's professional services, Faculties, and academic and student communities, with a meaningful and visible commitment to Diversity & Inclusion policies and practices
3. Experience of working in a federated environment where facilitation and networking skills are core to resolving complex cross departmental problems
4. Significant relevant work experience in a higher education setting, supporting students navigate substantial difficulties, including the assessment of risk and appropriate support response
5. Experience of managing and supervising a large team responding proactively to diverse and challenging situations, and working with colleagues across an organisation, both directly and indirectly, in order to support potentially complex cases
6. Proven understanding of confidentiality and ability to maintain professional boundaries
7. Strong interpersonal and communication skills (using variety of formats), with experience of building effective relationships with students and staff, leading and delivering outcomes through negotiation and influence
8. Proven emotional resilience and ability to work calmly under pressure, containing anxiety in self and other whilst prioritising activity to meet service demands and deadlines
9. Experience in analysing, interrogating and evaluating data to inform practices
10. Proven experience of developing and implementing a new system, process, or support initiative

Desirable criteria

1. Adept at maintaining progress on multiple agendas and projects simultaneously
2. An understanding and working knowledge of governance in the higher education sector, and the regulatory and legal arrangements for UK university governance

Further Information

We pride ourselves on being inclusive and welcoming. We embrace diversity and want everyone to feel that they belong and are connected to others in our community.

We are committed to working with our staff and unions on these and other issues, to continue to support our people and to develop a diverse and inclusive culture at King's.

We ask all candidates to submit a copy of their CV, and a supporting statement, detailing how they meet the essential criteria listed in the advert. If we receive a strong field of candidates, we may use the desirable criteria to choose our final shortlist, so please include your evidence against these where possible.

To find out how our managers review your application, please take a look at our ' How we Recruit ' pages.

Interviews are due to be held on 20th November in person

This role does not meet the requirements of the Home Office and therefore we are not able to offer sponsorship for candidates who require the right to work in the UK.