Closing Date: 30th January 2025
About the organisation
South Central Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust (SCAS) provides a range of emergency, urgent care and non-emergency healthcare services, along with commercial logistics services. They are a Foundation Trust and deliver services to the populations of the South Central region – Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Hampshire and Oxfordshire – as well as non-emergency patient transport services in Surrey and Sussex, and a dental service (accessed via NHS 111) in parts of Dorset. They employ 4,700 staff who, together with over 900 volunteers, enable us to operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The NHS finds itself in very challenging circumstances and SCAS is no exception. Their services in 999, NHS 111, Patient Transport Services (PTS) and Clinical Coordination Centres (CCCs) have had to respond to challenges that they have never seen before. They continue to operate in very difficult times and under significant pressure, which has necessitated a great deal of resilience from their people; the board and the community.
Their focus continues to be on ensuring they deliver a high-quality safe service, have a timely response to incidents, look after their workforce and live within the financial resource they have allocated to us. To do this it is imperative that they work closely with the wider NHS, emergency services, and public and voluntary sector partners to deliver their strategy and align it with the systems they work with. Their response to the Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspection of their 999 call centres and frontline operations, and the resultant report published in August 2022, has continued throughout 2023/24. Their SCAS Improvement Programme, immediately set up to address the issues identified, has focussed on four key areas: governance and well-led, culture and staff wellbeing, performance improvement, and patient safety.
The Chair is working closely with the Chief Executive and their NHS England Improvement Director to shape and develop a strong Unitary Board to ensure that their services meet the growing needs of the populations they serve, whilst realising the significant financial efficiencies they are required to deliver and keeping their operations safe.
About the role
They are looking to appoint two NEDs who will bring significant Board level leadership experience (Executive or NED) from complex, highly regulated public facing organisations. Within that they would like to hear from individuals with board level skills in organisational development, transformation and culture change, communications and engagement as well as those with strategic clinical experience particularly around primary care, community services or the emergency care pathway.
You will need to be a strategic thinker who understands the challenges of operating as part of a unitary board with the experience to provide supportive challenge in a pressurised environment under external scrutiny. Politically astute, you will enjoy engaging and working collaboratively with internal and external stakeholders to ensure that SCAS delivers its priorities and works effectively with its system partners. You will have the highest standards of personal integrity and will also be able to demonstrate a clear understanding of, and alignment to, their values.
They want their Board to provide a broad spectrum of lived experience and are keen to attract candidates who can bring diverse perspectives. They welcome expressions of interest from the widest possible range of backgrounds, particularly those who are under- represented at Board level in the NHS.
Location: HQ is Bicester with travel expected across the patch
Salary: £13,000 per annum for four days a month on average
For more information and to apply please visit: https://leadscas.com/
For a confidential discussion please contact:
Julia St Clare, Senior Consultant
E: julia.stclare@gatenbysanderson.com
T: +44 (0) 7807 631 564
Melanie Shearer, Partner
E: melanie.shearer@gatenbysanderson.com
T: +44 (0) 7785 616 548