PALS and Complaints Co-ordinator

We are looking to recruit an excellent administrator who displays empathy and kindness to support our PALS and Complaints function within the Experience Team. The successful candidate will have excellent communication and administrative skills. The role is challenging, interesting, and rewarding supporting service users, carers and their families to seek information and raise concerns. The successful candidate will be instrumental in improving the experience of care and maintaining the quality of our outstanding organisation. The role is part time and will be based at our head office in Hatfield with some flexibility for hybrid working., We are seeking a PALS and Complaints Co-ordinator to join our Corporate Experience Team based in Hatfield. The PALS and Complaints Co-ordinator will:

• Facilitate high quality and professional PALS and Complaints function for service users, carers and others seeking information, help or advice, or expressing concerns and complaints relating to services provided by HPFT, taking into account:
• The needs of service users, carers and the public
• The national standards and statutory procedures for Complaints
• Act as the first point of contact for service users, carers and others who wish to raise concerns, enabling them to pursue their concerns in the most appropriate way and managing complaints effectively when they arise.
• Works closely with Complaints Coordinators, Service Line Leads, Service Managers and Clinical staff.
• Provide support to team members in administration of Complaints management, data reporting and recording, management of information and communications.
• Support local teams with the complaints process to ensure that complaints and concerns are investigated and responded to appropriately, and lessons learned so that there is continuous improvement of services., To provide high quality coordination skills for our PALS and Complaints function of the Experience Team. The post holder will be responsible for speaking to members of the public, listening to their queries and concerns with empathy and kindness and dealing with the matter in a timely way.
  
  The successful candidate must be able to work on their own initiative, have excellent communication skills both written and verbal and be highly organised. They must be able to deal with distressing or emotional situations with compassion and empathy., Degree or minimum two years relevant experience
• Excellent standard of written and verbal English
Desirable criteria
• Professional qualification e.g. health and safety qualification etc., Demonstrate an understanding of a range of relevant work, procedures and practices which require expertise, underpinned by theoretical knowledge and relevant practical experience in Complaints and PALS
• Understand cultural and diversity issues i.e. ethnicity, age gender, religion, disability, social exclusion
• Ability to manage own workload and work under own initiative
• Ability to use initiative and work unsupervised to achieve results
Desirable criteria
• Knowledge of external organisations and their influence e.g. Care Quality Commission, Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman
• Good knowledge of clinical governance framework within the NHS including learning from complaints, comments and incidents
• Knowledge of client consent and data protection issues
• Knowledge of service user and carer involvement to influence quality development
  
  Hertfordshire Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust (HPFT) is an outstanding organisation with ambitions to match. We are one of just five mental health trusts to achieve an overall rating of 'Outstanding' from the Care Quality Commission, and our aim is to be the leading provider of mental health and specialist learning disability services in the country.
Our family of over 4000 members of staff provide health and social care for over 400,000 people with mental ill health, physical ill health and learning disabilities across Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, and Norfolk, delivering these services within the community and several inpatient settings. We also deliver a range of nationally commissioned specialist services including Tier 4 services for children and young people, perinatal services, plus medium and low secure learning disabilities services. The care we provide makes a fantastic difference to the lives of our service users, their families and carers - everything is underpinned by choice, independence and equality, with our Trust values embedded throughout, Hertfordshire Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust (HPFT) is rated by the Care Quality Commission as an Outstanding provider of mental health and learning disability services. In 2021, we won the prestigious Health Service Journal award for Mental Health Trust of the Year, with the judges saying they were "blown away" by our people's achievements and that everything they saw "sings and hums". This year, our staff rated us the 4^th best mental health and learning disability trust to work for out of all 52 trusts in the country. Our staff tell us that they are proud to be part of the HPFT team, proud of the standard of care we provide and proud that service users are our top priority. Our people tell us they feel supported though a great development, wellbeing and work-life balance offer and a highly compassionate, values-driven culture. We are equally proud of our staff, who live our values of being welcoming, kind, positive, respectful and professional