Senior Mental Health Placements Manager

Job responsibilities

Strategic Leadership and Coordination

- Oversee all placement activity, ensuring high-quality, cost-effective, and needs-led services including ensuring proactive panel processes are in place to ensure clients are in the most appropriate setting

- Act as the key point of contact for mental health placement queries, escalations, and commissioning challenges.

- Lead and manage the Mental Health Placement capacity (reviewing capacity) across boroughs, including supervision, development, and performance management.

- Ensure placement reviewing capacity is deployed as per agreed prioritization matrix, in a timely way, making impact for clients as well as on quality and financial envelope

Placement Oversight and Case Management

- Demonstrate strong project management skills to oversee placement planning, timelines, and inter-agency coordination.

- Coordinate the end-to-end placement process, from referral to review, for adults with complex mental health needs.

- Ensure all paperwork submitted to the panel is thoroughly checked for accuracy and completeness before circulation.

- Verify commissioning responsibility for each case, ensuring the individual is a Health client for the right borough in line with Responsible Commissioner Guidance.

- Maintain a strong understanding of the Mental Health Act, Care Act, and related commissioning frameworks.

- Ensure all panel meetings are accurately minuted, with clear action points recorded and followed up by the allocated care coordinator.

- Liaise regularly with care coordinators to ensure that any key changes to placements are captured, recorded, and escalated to the panel as required.

- Review due diligence data for providers and work proactively to ensure that any outstanding client reviews or cases are scheduled and incorporated into upcoming panel agendas.

- Contribute to placement review panels, safeguarding processes, and MDT meetings.

- Ensure placements comply with legal, clinical, and commissioning frameworks (e.g. Mental Health Act, Care Act, CHC).

Quality Assurance and Governance

- Develop and maintain robust placement pathways, protocols, and risk assessment tools.

- Monitor provider performance, undertake placement audits, and meet quality standards.

- Work collaboratively with contracts and commissioning teams to raise concerns and co-design service improvements.

Finance and Commissioning Interface

- Provide reports on spend, trends, and outcomes to senior leadership and commissioning groups.

- Lead negotiations with providers and support care coordinators to ensure cost of placement reflects the care plan

Stakeholder Engagement and Partnership Working

- Build strong working relationships with clinical teams, local authorities, housing providers, and third-sector organisations.

- Represent the Trust in regional planning groups and integrated care forums.

- Facilitate collaborative discharge planning, step-down arrangements, and prevention of delayed transfers of care.

Qualifications

Essential

• Current professional registration in relevant clinical subject/practice e.g. RMN, OT, Social Work, psychology or equivalent relevant experience in health, social care or voluntary sector
• Evidence of post qualification training/education
• Ongoing evidence of continuing professional development
• A commitment to completing full quality improvement development as outlined in the trust strategy

Desirable

• Educated to MSc Level

Experience

Essential

• Experience working in inpatient rehab or community mental health services
• Experience of working extensively with commissioners at place and ICB level, placement providers, local authority, provider collaboratives and other health and social care infrastructure regarding mental health complex placements
• Experience of managing and running panels, making panel applications and presenting cases
• Experience working across shared care arrangements
• Broad/high level understanding of mental disorders and treatment models
• Extensive experience of working with a diverse population
• Experience with budget control and management
• Experience of working within and/or leading a multidisciplinary team
• Experience applying prioritization/stratification processes to caseloads/client database to ensure effective use of finite clinical capacity

Desirable

• Experience of working with transforming care agenda / continuing health care

Knowledge

Essential

• Extensive knowledge of the complex care pathway for both 100% health and shared care placements
• Extensive knowledge of commissioning, complex placements working
• Knowledge of relevant legislation - Mental Health Act, Care Act, Housing Act, Quality & Safety Governance, Clinical audit and relevant national policies
• Applied understanding of issues relating to confidentiality
• Experience of implementing changes in working practices
• Ability to monitor and control resources
• Highly-developed leadership, negotiating and influencing skills with the ability to enthuse, motivate and involve individuals and teams
• Knowledge of performance management and monitoring of services within a large organisation
• Able to express complex issues both orally and in writing for a range of audiences. This includes writing reports, presentations and conducting meetings
• Excellent skills in communication across a range of audiences, including service users, patients and carers and staff at all levels of the organisation, fostering powerful, inclusive and productive working relationships
• Demonstrable understanding of anti-racism principles and commitment to actively applies them to promote inclusive and equitable services
• Ability to develop strategic plans, and to lead and effect cultural change in service provision within a large public sector organisation
• Ability to support and facilitate the development of organisational and Directorate equality action planning
• Ability to plan and organise a broad range of complex activities, formulating and adjusting plans to reflect changing circumstances, using project management methodologies
• IT literate and competent in using full Microsoft 365 suite, including PowerBI
• Highly developed analytical skills and judgement, able to to interpret a large set of complex facts and draw conclusions and make recommendations from them
• Skills in managing, supervising, and developing staff
• Ability to act sensitively, using discretion and empathy on issues which are highly emotive or contentious
• Ability to respond in difficult and at times highly charged situations
• Ability to manage a series of projects with frequent interruptions
• Ability to promote, persuade and influence in situations where others are sceptical or reluctant to engage
• Ability to understand and give clear advice in complex and sometimes stressful, sensitive, or distressing situations
• Ability to assist patients when necessary and deal with distressing information on occasion
• Ability to live the values of the Trust in everyday work, providing leadership
• Travel across a range of sites and to meetings with services, partners, agencies and stakeholders

Disclosure and Barring Service Check

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.

Certificate of Sponsorship

Applications from job seekers who require current Skilled worker sponsorship to work in the UK are welcome and will be considered alongside all other applications. For further information visit the UK Visas and Immigration website (Opens in a new tab).

From 6 April 2017, skilled worker applicants, applying for entry clearance into the UK, have had to present a criminal record certificate from each country they have resided continuously or cumulatively for 12 months or more in the past 10 years. Adult dependants (over 18 years old) are also subject to this requirement. Guidance can be found here Criminal records checks for overseas applicants (Opens in a new tab).

UK Registration

Applicants must have current UK professional registration. For further information please see NHS Careers website (opens in a new window).