Service Improvement Officer

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Gold Care Homes is a well-established national independent Care Homes group for the elderly. Gold Care Homes was established in 1999 and has since grown to operate 34 care homes across the South of England. The group offers a range of services which includes residential, nursing, frail elderly and dementia care.

Job Summary:

The Service Improvement Officer is an office-based role responsible for supporting our quality management system and assisting the regional manager and homes to facilitate an effective operational process. Support the regional manager at any delegated admin and operational task for the region and the home.

Key Responsibilities:

1. Support the regional manager at any delegated admin and operational task for the region and the home.
2. Undertake analysis of care and quality data on a weekly/monthly and annual basis to identify both service level and organisational themes and trends.
3. Oversee and manage the concerns and complaints process ensuring procedures are adhered to and identifying themes and trends as a platform for learning and service development.
4. Schedule Quality Assurance Audits in line with quality protocols and provide regular thematic reports from these.
5. Proofread quality assurance audit reports ensuring consistency of approach and alignment to organisational policies and procedures.
6. Review the standard and professionalism of CQC notifications and safeguarding alerts prior to their submission.
7. Triangulate information gathered from the company's compliance monitoring systems, notifications and audits and highlight to the Care, Quality and Governance Director any homes of concern.
8. Lead the preparation of relevant procedural and professional practice guidelines, including self-assessment and other relevant quality assurance materials. Ensure that annual quality assurance review plans linked to CQC inspection model are prepared, presented, implemented, monitored and reviewed.
9. Take a lead role in preparation for all external scrutiny of services and follow up work resulting from external inspections by CQC, Health Watch, Social Services.
10. Develop and improve systematic approaches to quality assurance across all services.
11. Ensure plans and programmes are in place across all services, and ensure all relevant staff are registered with CQC and hold the required qualifications for registration.
12. Ensure Service Improvement Plans are in place and monitored following publication of the outcome of CQC inspections for Gold Care Homes' care services.
13. Advise the Regulation and Care Governance Senior Manager and other relevant staff and outside agencies on quality assurance programmes, evaluations and recommended improvement actions.
14. Ensure that a Quality Assurance Programme Awareness Strategy is in place, and effectively built into care home managers' induction and manager development initiatives and internal training and validation of managers.
15. Set standards, policies and procedures which ensure compliance with statutory responsibilities, national legislation, delegated authority, Council policies, aims and objectives.
16. Lead on identifying and establishing effective management arrangements for key risks within the service, compliant with the Groups policy and framework.
17. Implement Gold Care Homes' Quality Assurance Framework for all the Care Homes.
18. Take account of the Service User perspective including the specific outcomes required for service users and the views of carers/relatives where appropriate in evaluating the quality of care service provision.
19. Work in collaboration with care service providers, providing practical support and advice in order to achieve quality services and positive outcomes for Service Users.
20. Work in collaboration with external partners - e.g. the Care Quality Commission, Health, other Local Authorities/London Boroughs and internal partners - e.g. Adult Social Care, Category Management, Complaints, Contract Monitoring, using all information available to assess/improve the quality of care provision.
21. Support the development and production of qualitative and quantitative data to inform risk profiling and analysis and service prioritisation.
22. Provide guidance and advice on quality assurance and improvement activities.
23. Identify early indicators/warning signs of concern as a means of prevention.
24. Support the prevention measures embedded in commissioning strategies.
25. This role may also involve managing CareHQ and Caresys to ensure documents for residents are uploaded timely.
26. This role may also require the post holder to support in any HR and recruitment processes.

Skills & Experience:

1. Good knowledge of the current Health & Social Care Act and associated regulations.
2. Responsible for planning, developing and implementing quality assurance and service improvement approaches such as the National Care Standards and CQC Performance Inspection Model.
3. Experience in self-evaluation and monitoring and evaluation strategies and a high level of communication and interpersonal skills.
4. Excellent theoretical and practical understanding of the CQC judgement framework.
5. Knowledge of the principles of excellent dementia care.
6. Excellent knowledge of the legislation and policies relating to the care of older people.
7. Proven practical experience in project management, preferably in social care.
8. Experience in the development of care policies and procedures.
9. Advanced knowledge and experience of planning care services.
10. Experience of effective people management including coaching and mentoring of staff.
11. Extensive experience and evidence of gathering and analysis data.
12. Proven experience of working in a Health or Social Care background, preferably management experience within a residential care home.