Welcome from our Chief Executive - Samantha Allen

Our organisation is expanding and we're looking for people with the right values, skills and/or potential to join us. We need people with energy, expertise, enthusiasm to help us provide the very best possible specialist NHS mental health and learning disability care. This involves helping us achieve our strategy to improve the quality of life for the communities we serve through People, Prevention and Partnerships.

So what can we offer you in return?

We're an organisation which puts people first. We'll do everything possible to help you feel respected, valued and included. We'll help you learn, acquire new skills and gain further experience to support your career development. And we'll provide the opportunity for you to bring your fresh ideas to work about how we can do things differently and continue improving.

You will also be joining a health and care system committed to working together to do the best we can for the communities we serve. Above all, at Sussex Partnership you'll have the chance to make a difference to the lives of the patients, carers and families across our communities.

If you like the sound of that, then come and join our team.

Samantha Allen

Chief Executive

Job overview

This is an exciting opportunity to join the Discovery College in its next stage of development. The role is supporting the college in its offer of courses for young people and their supporters. The courses are coproduced and codelivered by young people and clinicians and are aimed at enabling young people to learn more about how to find emotional wellbeing and deal with mental health challenges.

Main duties of the job

The role provides administrative support to the team. It involves liaising, often by phone, with young people, their parents and carers - providing them with the necessary information for them to enrol on the appropriate course and supporting their journey through Discovery College. It also involves liaising with peer mentors and trainers and with clinicians working on our courses. This role will contribute to the maintenance of our website and social media channels.

Working for our organisation

We're a large NHS Mental Health Trust in South East England. We're looking for people to help us provide high quality services for the patients, carers and local communities we serve.

We want patients and staff to recommend our organisation as a place where they would be happy for their friends and family to be treated. You can help us do this by bringing your skills, experience and commitment to Sussex Partnership.

Sussex Partnership NHS FT is committed to supporting a diverse workforce that reflects our communities. Our workforce is currently under-represented from Black and Minority, Ethnic and disabled communities and we would welcome applications from these communities.

We encourage flexible working. We know that a positive work/ life balance brings about huge health-related benefits, which has a positive impact on the care we provide. Please speak to us about flexible working, for example, home-working, part time hours, flexible start/ finish times or anything else. If it works for you and works for the role, we'll do our best to make it happen.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities
This is an interesting and varied position that would suit an administrator who is looking for a rewarding role in which finding a balance between team working and utilising initiative is important. The post holder will be motivated and flexible, be able to work well within a team and able to organise their own workload. Good time management skills and being able to prioritise tasks is essential as is having good attention to detail. You will need to demonstrate a professional and confident telephone manner, and be able to liaise effectively with other teams and agencies and members of the public. You will also need to have the ability to deal sensitively with people who may be distressed. This is a busy position and the successful candidate will provide excellent administration support to our broader team of clinical and peer workers. Duties will include processing applications and expressions of interest in courses, booking venues, raising purchase orders. Therefore, a good working knowledge and experience of using Microsoft Word, Excel and Outlook is essential. The main duties of the position are: liaising with young people and their supporters by phone, dealing with enquiries from the website, processing applications and expressions of interest, dealing with questions and queries about courses and the work of the college, answering telephone calls efficiently and professionally, taking accurate messages, monitoring Outlook admin inbox, providing additional administrative support to the team and contributing to the maintenance our website and social media channels.

Person specification

Qualifications
Essential criteria

• Good standard of secondary education; GCSE at Grade C or above or equivalent

Knowledge/Experience
Essential criteria

• Proven experience of a range of secretarial procedures
• Experience of producing documents to a high standard of presentation with good accuracy
• Experience of maintaining office systems
• Experience of working as part of a team

Sussex Partnership NHS FT is committed to supporting a diverse workforce that reflects our communities. Our workforce is currently under-represented from Black and Minority, Ethnic and disabled communities and we would welcome applications from these communities.

We regret that we are unable to advise candidates if they have not been shortlisted. If you have not heard from us within three weeks of the closing date please assume that you have been unsuccessful on this occasion.

In the event of an excessive number of applicants the Trust reserves the right to close this vacancy earlier than indicated.

Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust takes its responsibilities for the safeguarding and protection of children and young people and vulnerable adults very seriously and expects this of all its employees and bank workers. The Trust works with adult and children's social care to ensure that the integrated service has systems in place to equip staff and bank workers with the knowledge and skills to recognize abuse, and take action to safeguard and protect vulnerable adults and children and young people. It is expected that all staff and bank workers familiarise themselves with the appropriate structures and policies and with the Sussex child protection and safeguarding procedures and the Sussex multi-agency policy and procedures for safeguarding vulnerable adults and undertake the relevant essential training and further training appropriate to their role.

Successful candidates are normally offered salaries at the bottom of the relevant salary range. However, where previous or equivalent NHS experience in a similar role can be demonstrated and evidenced, this may be taken into consideration when setting the starting salary.