Head of Emergency Preparedness, Resilience and Response

Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust provides local general hospital and community services to around 260,000 people in Walsall and the surrounding areas. We are a truly integrated healthcare provider covering Walsall and beyond, with multidisciplinary acute and community services that allow us to provide the right care in the right place; such as rapid response in the community and home-based care so that those with long term conditions and the frail elderly can remain in their own homes to be cared for. We provide the full range of district general hospital services in Walsall Manor Hospital and we provide high quality, friendly and effective community health services from some 60 sites including health centres and GP surgeries. We are the lead provider for the Walsall Together integrated Place-based partnership, and part of a Group structure with The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust.

Covid-19 has highlighted the vital importance of Emergency Preparedness, Resilience and Response and has been the catalyst for deeper appreciation of this key function across the NHS. This critical post is ideal for an ambitious leader who wants to support the safe management of acute and community services, and enhance our preparedness and resilience as an organisation so that we can respond optimally for the patients that we serve. Over recent years we have dealt with many EPRR matters in addition to Covid-19, including RSV and influenza surges, Industrial Action, the impact of Brexit, the Commonwealth Games locally in the West Midlands and Incidents affecting Digital Service, Estates and Diagnostics to name a few. The post-holder will lead the Trust’s EPRR function, including the Trust’s Incident Control Centre. The post-holder will ensure the learning from Covid-19 is applied to all other areas of EPRR including Business Continuity and Major Incident Planning in particular so that we strengthen and improve our performance against the NHS Core Standards for EPRR.

We are excited to be recruiting to the post of Head of Emergency Preparedness Resilience and Response. Having exited Special Measures 3 years ago, following improved CQC ratings, we are looking for an enthusiastic, motivated and ambitious leader to help deliver the Trust’s ambition to be an Outstanding provider of community and hospital healthcare services. The successful post-holder will join an organisation that is demonstrably improving; the Trust’s 4-hour Emergency Access Standard performance is now consistently in the upper third nationally, the Trust has delivered the best ambulance handover times in the West Midlands for 24 of the last 25 months, and is consistently delivering access to Cancer treatment that is materially better than the West Midlands and national average. In the 2022 National Staff Survey the Trust was in the Top 5 most improved organisations for our proportion of staff that would recommend us as a place to work. We know we still have many challenges and much more to do, however, including strengthening our workforce and clinical governance across the Trust and addressing specific quality challenges in individual services, and would welcome applications from candidates who wish to be part of delivering improvements that lead to outstanding care for the people that we serve.

You will join an organisation with a clear vision, strong values, a commitment to the added value we provide to our communities, and a fully substantive Executive Team that is focused on sustainable improvement and innovation. We have got off to a strong start on our journey but we know we still have a way to go to meet our visionto deliver exceptional care together to improve the health and wellbeing of our communities. Bring your passion and commitment to Walsall and help us make that difference.

For further details, please refer to the supporting documents attached.