Chief Medical Officer, Rotherham Doncaster and South Humber NHS Trust

Rotherham Doncaster and South Humber (RDaSH) NHS Foundation Trust employs over 3,400 talented people across our wide range of services and locations, who are very much appreciated, valued and respected.

We are passionate about looking at ways we can enhance the quality of our service and our culture and this is reflected in doing things the RDaSHWay.

At RDaSH we care about equality and diversity and hold a host of staff networks including black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) meetings, the disability and wellness network, the Women’s network, the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, Q+ (LGBTQ+) network and later this year we will be launching our Carers network.

Each year around 155,000 people access RDaSH NHS services, which operate in over 100 locations across Rotherham, Doncaster and North Lincolnshire.

Thank you for your interest in the role of Chief Medical Officer at Rotherham, Doncaster and South Humber and joining the Board of Directors, executive group, and our clinical leadership executive, to lead our work on clinical standards, research, and medical education. This will play a key part in supporting our teams to provide the best possible care to our patients, carers, and communities.
We are a little bit different, and over the next five years we hope to use that difference to really transform outcomes and tackle health inequalities as we go through a transition and period of significant development. Your skills could be just what we need and why this might be the moment for you to come onboard. If you take a look at our 28 Promises, co-produced with our community, these will give you a good insight into the difference we offer. These are real world commitments far away from the NHS-usual. The promises enshrine our commitment to nurture the power in our communities, and far from being an on the shelf (or off the shelf) strategy, they are the absolute currency of our work as a Board, across our Care Groups and with patients.
We work in three places: North Lincolnshire, around Scunthorpe, which is a rural community south of the Humber; Rotherham on the edge of the city of Sheffield, a place with real health and social inequality but with remarkable regeneration over recent years; and the newly crowned city of Doncaster with its cohesive tradition of general practice joint working. All in, just short of 750,000 people look to us for their mental health care – adults, kids, and older adults - and about 250,000 rely on us for physical healthcare too. We also provide autism and learning disability services across the whole patch.
Three quarters of our services are rated Good or Outstanding, and having been Chief Executive since 2023, I think those positive views are about right. Likewise, our staff survey results consistently show that we are a good place to work with positive relationships and some real strengths around psychological safety and inclusion. Yet we have work to do to bring greater focus on outcomes, recruitment and retention of clinicians, and creation of clinical pathways which provide great care to service users and value for money. Some of our services are rated as Requires Improvement – and we have work to do to consistently meet the standards that our patients, and our staff colleagues, deserve.
We have a high calibre Board, combining newer and more experienced members, with seven non-executives who bring a mix of commercial and academic strength working alongside seven executive directors. Our Board chair, Kath Lavery, has a long history of bring a dedicated and passionate public servant. The chair of governors, Jo Cox, brings real knowledge of the local community, of our services, and of our partnerships with health and justice. If successful, you would join a team that is shaping up to becoming recognised as the NHS’ first “community powered organisation.” We cannot do that without working better with the voluntary or third sector, nor without a deepened partnership with primary care. We would look to the CMO to work alongside me to help us secure that collaboration.
We restructured the way we work in 2023. Four times more clinicians than before are now part of our leadership. Our thirteen clinical directorates have medical leads, our five Care Groups their own medical directors, and the CMO leads a corporate medical leadership teams which includes two senior doctors as deputy and associate, as well as a director of R&D and directors of post and undergraduate medical education (and their new deputies). We are determined to bring psychiatrists, geriatricians and GPs into the very heart of decision making in the Trust.
This is a fast-paced transition requiring someone who wants to make a real difference. Our mission is to nurture the power in our communities. As Chief Medical Officer, you will work alongside our established Director of Psychological Professionals and recently recruited Chief Nurse to help challenge and advise our Chief Operating Officer and the five Care Groups that provide our all-age portfolio of services, to ensure safe, high quality and effective services, which meet the needs of our communities. You will also play a leading role in shaping the vision and model for clinical services across our system, working closely with partners in the South Yorkshire, Humber and North Yorkshire, and Lincolnshire, Integrated Care Systems.
We are part-way through a fast-paced transition which means we need senior colleagues who truly want to make a difference. RDaSH benefits from outstanding research capability and strong service-user partnerships. We want to bridge these two assets and create a listening enterprise that experiments for the right results so we can deliver services to be proud of. Working with New Local, PSC, Mokita and Virginia Mason, we are investing heavily in leadership development and quality improvement over the next two years. To find out more about working for RDaSH and the fantastic benefits we offer, we actively encourage you to speak in confidence with our recruitment partners, Simon Green and Rabiya Ali at Alumni Global, who are supporting us with this recruitment.
Yours sincerely
Toby Lewis
Chief Executive
It’s exciting times at our Trust as we deliver services in various locations across Rotherham, Doncaster and North Lincolnshire and as we transform the mental health services we deliver to cater better for our patients’ needs. But we deliver far more services than mental health services to the people we serve. Services include inpatient and hospital-based services at The Woodlands and Swallownest Court in Rotherham, the Tickhill Road site in Doncaster, Great Oaks in Scunthorpe, and community services in a wide range of community settings, including registered and supported living homes. We also run a hospice and a drug and alcohol service as well as being the Lead Provider for the Adult Eating Disorder Provider Collaborative within the South Yorkshire Integrated Care System.
Our vision is to nurture the power in our communities and we have 28 promises – pledges that we have made to the communities we serve. You can read them here. Around 155,000 people access our services each year. We employ around 4,500 dedicated staff providing a wide range of clinical and non-clinical services and have over 50 committed volunteers of all ages and backgrounds who selflessly give up their time to help us, carrying out a variety of tasks. All of which helps support our colleagues in their clinical duties and offers additional help and activities for service users.
Please click here to view the Job Description & Person Specification
All applications must include:
• A full curriculum vitae/resume
• Quoting the relevant role reference number: A039917
• A covering letter highlighting the aspects of the job description and RDaSH that particularly attract you to the post (Microsoft Word document)
• Contact details for three referees, these will not be contacted without your permission. (References should validate a minimum period of six years employment)
• A completed Equal Opportunities Monitoring Form (which you will be redirected to once you have submitted your application) *
Right to work checks
If you are successfully shortlisted, our partner, Yoti, will contact you to complete an online right to work check. This is a quick and secure process, ensuring that all necessary legal requirements are met before proceeding further in the recruitment process.
Monitoring
One of Alumni Global’s and RDaSH's objectives is to ensure that its workforce is reflective of the local community and therefore we actively encourage applications from under-represented groups. So that we can successfully achieve these aims, while it is not mandatory we would encourage every applicant to complete the “Equal Opportunities Monitoring form” so that we can measure the effectiveness of our efforts. The Recruiting Manager does not have access to the Monitoring Information Sections of the application form at any stage of the process and the information provided will be kept entirely confidential.
For a confidential discussion on this role please contact:
Simon Green, Director or Rabiya Ali, Consultant, on +44 754 574 11 53.
Candidate adjustment
If you require any reasonable adjustments to be made as part of the recruitment process please can you advise us so that we can ensure this is accommodated.
Closing date: 22nd November 2024
Stakeholder Sessions: TBC
Final Interviews: 17th December 2024
Please ensure you have made a note of the final interview date(s). We recommend that you bookmark this microsite, as any potential updates regarding the role will be posted online.