Special Projects Team Policy Advisor

In the Department of Health and Social Care, we are proud of our purpose - to enable everyone to live more independent, healthier lives for longer. To achieve this, and create a great place to work, we have four values: we are inclusive, we constantly improve, we challenge, and we are agile. If this sounds like an environment you would like to work in, we would love to hear from you. We are advertising an exciting and challenging policy role within the NHS Workforce Directorate, which is part of the Secondary Care and Integration Group. The NHS workforce is a complex, high profile policy area with considerable interest from ministers and senior officials, the media and the public. The NHS workforce is a vital part of everything the NHS does; it is currently facing significant challenges in terms of size, make-up, and ensuring it has the right skills to respond to the changing needs of an ageing population with a greater burden of disease and complex healthcare needs. This is an exciting opportunity to help ensure the NHS workforce is able to meet the long-term strategic challenges it will face in the coming years. The NHS Workforce Directorate is establishing a new Special Projects team, which will be a flexible resource focused on high priority, strategic, cross-cutting challenges affecting the NHS workforce. It will work across teams in the NHS Workforce Directorate, working closely with the workforce Senior Management Team, NHS England, NHS Employers and external stakeholders to respond to emerging priorities from ministers, provide strategic input to the development of the 10-Year Health Plan, and on issues identified by teams that are affecting the NHS workforce. The team will lead cross-cutting projects to get to the heart of the challenges identified and develop effective policy solutions, working in partnership with stakeholders. The role will provide policy and project delivery support to the team to monitor and deliver special projects across the NHS Workforce Directorate, and will include:

• Coordinate work to oversee the portfolio of special projects across the NHS Workforce Directorate, supporting timely delivery and responding to key areas of ministerial focus.
• Support the delivery of individual projects which the special projects team are responsible for delivering, ensuring workable policy solutions are developed to respond to strategic workforce challenges.
• Provide input into clear, concise, evidence-based recommendations and policy solutions for senior officials and ministers, setting out options, costs, risks, and benefits.
• Build and maintain relationships with colleagues across government and with external stakeholders to gather evidence, insight, and ideas to understand specific challenges, and test policy solutions as they develop.
• Provide general administration and secretariat support for the team, including taking notes and actions of key meetings, setting agendas, maintaining a log of actions and keeping track of them.