Head of Service - CAMHS Acute Services’

Job Overview

We are seeking an experienced and dynamic Head of Service to provide senior operational and strategic leadership across NELFT’s integrated Children and Young People’s acute and crisis mental health pathway, comprising Brookside Adolescent Inpatient Unit, the Young People’s Home Treatment Team (YPHTT), and the CAMHS Psychiatric Liaison and Assessment Service. This is a key senior leadership role with responsibility for ensuring the three services work effectively as an integrated pathway, delivering timely crisis assessment, effective alternatives to hospital admission, safe and high-quality inpatient care, early supported discharge and seamless transitions back into community services.

Working closely with clinical and professional leads, the successful candidate will have senior operational accountability for quality and patient safety, patient flow, performance, workforce, finance, demand and capacity, regulatory compliance and delivery against commissioned standards. They will lead service transformation and continuous improvement, develop effective multidisciplinary and cross-organisational working, and build strong partnerships with Community CAMHS, acute hospitals, local authorities, commissioners and the NCEL Provider Collaborative. We are looking for an inclusive and visible leader who can inspire teams, manage complexity and change, use data and resources effectively, and maintain a clear focus on improving outcomes and experience for children, young people and their families.

Main duties of the job

The Post Holder Will

• Provide senior strategic and operational leadership across Brookside Adolescent Inpatient Unit, the Young People’s Home Treatment Team (YPHTT) and CAMHS Psychiatric Liaison and Assessment Service, ensuring the three services operate effectively as an integrated acute and crisis pathway.
• Lead and oversee patient flow across the pathway, including admission, discharge, bed management, alternatives to admission and early supported discharge, working closely with NCEL Patient Flow, Community CAMHS and partner organisations.
• Establish and maintain effective interfaces, escalation arrangements and transfer-of-care processes between Psychiatric Liaison, YPHTT, Brookside, Community CAMHS and the NCEL Provider Collaborative.
• Hold senior operational accountability for service quality, patient safety, clinical and operational performance, demand and capacity, workforce, finance and regulatory compliance.
• Work in partnership with medical, nursing, psychological, social work and allied health professional leads to ensure effective multidisciplinary clinical governance, quality assurance and safe service delivery across the pathway.
• Lead the performance management of the services, using activity, quality, demand, capacity, workforce, financial and patient-experience information to identify pressures, address variation and drive continuous improvement.
• Provide leadership for service transformation and development, implementing evidence-based improvements and ensuring services respond effectively to national policy, local population needs and commissioned service requirements.
• Ensure effective workforce planning and management, including appropriate staffing levels and skill mix, recruitment, supervision, appraisal, staff development, mandatory training and performance management.
• Manage delegated budgets and resources, ensuring services operate within agreed financial plans and contribute to efficiency and Cost Improvement Programme requirements while maintaining quality and safety.
• Ensure robust risk management, safeguarding, incident management and escalation arrangements, with significant operational and clinical risks identified, managed and escalated appropriately.
• Develop and maintain strong relationships with children, young people and families, Community CAMHS, acute hospitals, local authorities, commissioners, the ICB, NCEL Provider Collaborative and other system partners, ensuring their views inform service development.
• Promote a culture of collaboration, innovation, continuous learning and improvement, supporting interoperability and joint working across the three services.
• Represent the services and NELFT at relevant internal, external and system-level meetings, providing assurance on service delivery, performance, quality and improvement.
• Deputise for the Assistant Director for CYP ONEL Acute Services and undertake delegated strategic, operational and corporate responsibilities as required.
  
  

Detailed Job Description And Main Responsibilities

The Head of Service will provide senior operational and strategic leadership for NELFT’s integrated Children and Young People’s acute and crisis mental health pathway, comprising Brookside Adolescent Inpatient Unit, the Young People’s Home Treatment Team (YPHTT), and the CAMHS Psychiatric Liaison and Assessment Service. The post holder will ensure that the three services operate as an integrated pathway, providing timely crisis assessment, effective alternatives to admission, safe inpatient care, early supported discharge and seamless transition back to community services.

Key Responsibilities Will Include

• Strategic and operational leadership: Provide visible and effective senior leadership across the three services, setting clear priorities and ensuring high-quality, safe and responsive service delivery. Support the strategic direction of CYP acute and crisis services and lead the implementation of service developments, transformation programmes and new models of care in response to evidence-based practice, national policy, local population needs and commissioned requirements.
• Integrated pathway and patient flow: Ensure Brookside, YPHTT and Psychiatric Liaison and Assessment operate as a coordinated pathway. Establish effective interfaces, escalation arrangements and transfer-of-care processes between the three services, Community CAMHS and NCEL Patient Flow. Provide senior oversight of admissions, discharges, bed management, pathway capacity and operational bottlenecks, ensuring barriers to timely care are identified, escalated and resolved.
• Quality, safety and clinical governance: Hold senior operational accountability for service quality and patient safety, working in partnership with medical, nursing, psychology, social work and allied health professional leads to maintain effective multidisciplinary clinical governance. Ensure services meet required care-quality standards, regulatory requirements, Trust policies and commissioned service specifications, with robust arrangements for safeguarding, incident reporting, risk management, audit and learning from incidents and complaints.
• Performance, demand and capacity: Establish and maintain an integrated performance framework across the three services, bringing together activity, demand, capacity, quality, workforce, finance and patient-experience information. Analyse performance and quality information, identify emerging pressures or variation and ensure timely corrective action and improvement plans are implemented. Hold operational leads to account for delivery against agreed KPIs, quality standards, workforce measures, budgets and improvement trajectories.
• Workforce leadership: Ensure the services have appropriate staffing levels, skill mix and leadership arrangements to meet the needs of children and young people while operating within agreed resources. Provide oversight of recruitment, induction, supervision, appraisal, statutory and mandatory training, staff development and performance management. Develop leadership capability across the services and promote a culture of openness, learning, collaboration, accountability and continuous professional development.
• Financial and resource management: Manage delegated budgets in accordance with Trust financial governance and schemes of delegation. Ensure services are delivered within agreed financial plans and make effective use of workforce and other resources. Contribute to annual efficiency and Cost Improvement Programme requirements while ensuring that financial decisions continue to support safe, effective and high-quality care.
• Service improvement and transformation: Lead significant programmes of service change and continuous improvement, ensuring changes are effectively planned, implemented and evaluated against measurable outcomes and timescales. Promote innovation, evidence-based practice, integrated multidisciplinary working, clinical audit and research, and contribute to business cases, service specifications and the development of new services where required.
• Partnership and system working: Develop and sustain effective relationships across organisational boundaries, including with the NCEL Provider Collaborative, commissioners, ICB, acute hospitals, Community CAMHS, local authorities, social care, primary care, voluntary sector organisations and other mental health providers. Represent the service and Trust at relevant internal and external forums and work collaboratively with partners to address pathway pressures and improve outcomes for children and young people.
• Children, young people and families: Ensure the voices and experiences of children, young people, parents and carers are actively sought and used to influence service delivery, improvement and development. The post holder will ensure services remain responsive to the needs of the populations they serve and that learning from feedback and complaints is translated into meaningful improvement.
• Communication and senior representation: Communicate complex, sensitive and sometimes contentious information effectively with staff, senior leaders, service users, families and external partners. Chair and participate in relevant meetings, prepare and present reports and provide appropriate assurance on performance, quality, finance, workforce, risk and service delivery.
• Autonomy and senior accountability: Work autonomously, using significant professional judgement, knowledge and experience to interpret national and local policy and translate this into effective service delivery. The role requires the ability to manage competing priorities, respond to operational pressures and make timely decisions within complex and sometimes challenging circumstances.
  
  

Starting with NELFT

NELFT place a great deal of importance on new starters being properly welcomed and inducted into the Trust. All new starters will join the Trust on the first Monday of each month and will undertake a comprehensive induction of up to two weeks which will include mandatory training, systems training and the allocation of equipment. As part of the process new starters will have the opportunity to also meet the executive team, senior managers and attend a number of drop-in sessions focusing on engagement, health and wellbeing and key processes. The induction will be held at our head office in Goodmaye, Essex.

Probationary Period

This post will be subject to a probationary period. Internal applicants are exempt from the probationary period (unless you are an internal applicant currently part way through a probationary period or currently a bank member of staff).

High Cost Area Supplement Outer London (B&D, Redbridge, Havering and Waltham Forest, CEME)

This post also attracts payment for High Cost Area Supplement of 15% of the basic salary (with a minimum of £4,714 to a maximum of £5,941 p.a. pro rata for part time).

Working for Us

Joining #TeamNELFT means you’ll become part of a welcoming and supportive working environment. We’re CQC rated Good, and we want you to join us on the journey towards an Outstanding rating. NELFT has sites across North East London and Essex. We provide community and mental healthcare services to adults and children within these areas.

The Trust has award-winning equality and diversity initiatives, along with staff health and wellbeing activities. We invest significantly in your development because when you feel valued and supported, we can deliver the highest quality care to our patients. We are a Level 3 Disability Confident Leader, have been recognised in the Working Families Top 10 Employers benchmark for five consecutive years, and hold a Carers UK Level 1 Accreditation. Through our staff networks and training opportunities, we strive to foster a just and compassionate culture at NELFT.

Our Values 2025 - 2030

Working with our colleagues, patients and carers we have co-produced three new values that we aim to embed within our culture here at NELFT.

They Are

• We are kind.
• We are respectful.
• We work together with our communities.
  
  

These three values help us to strive to provide the best care by

the best people.

Certificates of Sponsorship

Although we are a registered sponsor organisation, we are unable to offer sponsorship for all job roles. Please check your eligibility under the UKVI points-based system. When calculating the basic salary for sponsorship, HCAS (High-Cost Area Supplement) is not included to ensure fairness and consistency within our Trust.

Use of AI

We value applications that genuinely reflect each candidate’s own skills, experience and motivations. We therefore strongly discourage the use of AI-generated content in applications.

Applications should be written in your own words and accurately represent your knowledge, skills and experience.

We reserve the right to reject an application where we reasonably believe AI has been used to generate or materially contribute to its content.

Please see the attached job description and person specification for more information about this role and working at North East London NHS Foundation Trust. We encourage you to refer to this when completing your application.

We welcome your application even if you do not meet all the criteria listed in the person specification. Please apply as soon as possible as some posts close early to limit the number of applications.

Name: Ashok Kakati

Job title: Assistant Director

Contact Number: 07803203629

Email: ashok.kakati1@nhs.net