Involvement and Engagement Team Manager

at  Tees Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust

To manage Involvement and Engagement Facilitators and Community Development Workers, as well as administrative staff to ensure effective and efficient operation of the service. To deliver an efficient and effective co-creation, involvement and engagement function for service users, carers, and their families. To play a leading role and support and promote a shared understanding of the vision for co-creation across all clinical and corporate services that is in line with the Trust values and behaviours. To lead on and continue the development of the Involvement and Engagement Team and what they can offer to service users and carers to get involved in co-creation activity including training, support and understanding of complex mental health diagnosis and dealing with people in distress, and issue resolution.
To support the development of a strategy for co-creation and its implementation. To ensure that patient experience and co-creation elements of the Trusts Strategic Goals are being delivering through effective and innovative ways of working. To ensure that service user and carer voices are heard and acted upon in a timely and appropriate way. To work in a strengths-based, trauma-informed way with all service users and carers.
To model co-creation and the appropriate use of self-disclosure and lived experience when appropriate. To ensure that all service users and carers have equitable access to opportunities within the Trust and manage the systems that support this. In partnership with others, support the develop of relevant training and support for service users and carers to enable them to participate in involvement/co-creation activities. To work with others to provide training and support on co-creation to clinical, nursing, allied health professionals and managers.
To build relationships with partner organisations across the ICS (Integrated Care System) as well as the VCS (Voluntary and Community Service) to increase the diversity of voice within service user and carer involvement, including seldom heard communities. To facilitate workshops and events with TEWV staff / carers / service users and partners. To promote, always, a positive image of people with mental health conditions, autism and learning disabilities, and challenge mental health stigma and discrimination through in-depth understanding of these conditions. To lead by example and take a partnership approach by putting co-creation at the heart of all the work undertaken with services users, carers, staff, and partners.
To work with and foster close relationships with teams working on shared aims within the organisation. E.g., Peer Support, Volunteering, Recovery Colleges, Equality and Diversity Team, Patient Experience, Individual Placement Support etc. To ensure that the Trusts obligations in relation to the involvement of service users and carers in co-creation of service developments are met. To support meaningful co-creation in all new trust-wide service design, improvements, and transformation.
To be responsible for and lead on overseeing involvement opportunities for service users and carers, ensuring these are shared in a fair and equitable way. Through the Involvement and Engagement Facilitators and Community Development Officers ensure that service users and carers are supported and developed to meet their aspirations for co-creation and involvement in the Trust. To oversee the recruitment, retention and engagement of service user and carers into the involvement service. To support service users, carers and their families when experiencing distress at meetings and events and to consult with services, including crisis services, accordingly.
To provide advice and support to service users/carers when action in an involvement capacity, and ensure they have their voice heard, including those seldom heard and marginalised communities. To provide and receive highly complex, sensitive, or contentious information, where persuasive, motivational, negotiating, training, empathic or re-assurance skills are required. To communicate effectively in a way which recognises difference and ensures that people feel included and their individual communication needs are met. To present structured and objective information to the senior management team as required, regarding operational issues e.g., service pressures, safeguarding needs etc.
To promotes Trauma Informed Approaches and Recovery Values as appropriate, and the need to listen to service user voices in the co-creation of services and individual care. Clearly articulate the role and benefit of co-creation to a diverse range of audiences. To communicate information regarding services users and carers, and their involvement activity, positively, compassionately, and in a timely manner, always having due regard for confidentiality. To represent the Involvement and Engagement Team at a range of meetings, professional networks, and special interest groups, locally and regionally.
To deal with formal complaints sensitively and effectively, with compassion and empathy, avoiding escalation where possible. To develop training materials, organisational development and work programmes for the Involvement and Engagement Team. To support the trust to understand the complex issues that service users and carers face when getting involved in co-creation activity by having an understanding of complex mental health diagnosis, always ensuring their psychological safety, and analysing opportunities offered to service users and carers to make sure this does not compromise their diagnosis or involvement with the trust, and escalate any issues identified re unintentional PTSD. To develop specialist training and support for service users and carers to participate in involvement / co-creation activities for example dealing with people in distress, conflict resolution, autism training, trauma-informed care, leadership development and strategic thinking

Please refer the Job description for details