Policy & Delivery Manager inLeeds inLeeds PUBLISHED 12 DEC 2023

The post holder plays a significant role in the Network team developing and delivering our policy work, creating a compelling offer to enable the Network to grow its membership in wider primary care.

This involves building relationships with national stakeholders for primary care professions and providers, securing membership through our corporate partnership scheme as well as utilising the skills, knowledge and experience of providers in wider primary care to influence national policy and share best practice best practice through events and conferences.

Policy work and analysis

Undertake policy work and analysis that:

• Delivers policy implementation products from the Network such as its briefings, articles, roundtables and consultation responses, working closely with the Confed policy team
• Provides expertise and a good understanding of current primary care policy within the team to regularly provide contributions to discussions and written materials.
• Supports the Network to influence policy design at a national level and implementation locally to help members meet the expectations of them. This includes gathering examples of best practice.
• Focuses on specific policy projects on a responsive basis, individually or working collaboratively with the wider policy team. These will be areas of work our members see as a priority.
• Supports communications colleagues to feed into press statements which are developed by the Network to respond to enquiries from the media or proactively promote our work or that of the other networks.
• Manages stakeholder relationships with external organisations to develop joint policy projects and products where appropriate.
• Ensures connectivity and provides relevant content into the NHS Confederations core policy work programme, and wider stakeholders to ensure the primary care voice connects to system level conversations or lobbying activity as part of the confederations integrated member offer.

Responsible for supporting the growth of the Network and the development and delivery of a wide range of services to members, including:

• Identify and recruit new members through engagement and promotion of policy priorities
• Visit members in their localities for the purpose of learning about different primary care models, ensure members feel valued, and understand member needs.
• Providing services to members through policy analysis, best practice reports case studies, research projects connecting members with the latest policy thinking
• Preparing briefings to help inform health and care leaders of the key issues of the day
• Contributing to the Primary Care Networks events programme, including meetings with senior leaders, and high-profile events and conferences

Proactively seek out opportunities to promote the work of the Primary Care Network through:

• Working closely with the press and media, and the NHS Confederations media team, providing comment and background briefing on topical health stories and issues
• Ensuring members receive relevant and timely updates from the NHS Confederation about its work and national developments of interest to members through blogs and member updates.

The Network maintains positive relationships with potential commercial partners and actively identifies commercial opportunities this role will actively support this aim as well as lead on the preparation of presentations to commercial partners to showcase the Network.

Key Relationships

Develop and/or maintain relationships with the following stakeholders on a day-to-day basis:

• Policy leads at national bodies including NHS England, Department of Health, Royal Colleges, professional bodies, Care Quality Commission and Local Government Association.
• Policy leads at the health think tanks
• Policy and public affairs leads at the NHS Confederation
• Leaders in providers of primary care services- both members and prospective members

Support the development of a high performing team through:

• Utilising the tools in place to work efficiently and collaboratively such as project trackers, programme plans and communication apps this role is expected to model excellence
• Working flexibly and responsively to needs ensuring effective prioritisation and meeting short notice deadlines as required
• Supporting the Director and Assistant Director with the delivery of high quality and impactful policy work
• Demonstrating initiative and a proactive approach to the delivery of policy work that adds value and anticipates needs
• Investing in own personal development through feedback and continuous learning

• This role operates in a matrix working environment and requires the postholder to step out of their own silos and see the bigger picture to understand the potential impact of their own activities on other parts of the business.
• The postholder achieves a broad perspective by establishing and maintain wider connections and visibility across networks both internally and externally.

As a Policy and Delivery Manager focused on Pharmacy, Optometry, Dentistry and Audiology you will play a significant role to build our profile and influence with wider primary care to support us to grow our membership. You will:

• continue to build relationships with stakeholders and national partners to facilitate the expansion of the Network to include community pharmacy, ophthalmology, audiology and dentistry.
• manage specific policy projects on a responsive basis, individually or working collaboratively with the wider policy team, and across Confed.
• engage regularly with our members, gathering their views and facilitating the sharing of best practice through events, webinars and conferences.
• keep abreast of national developments relevant to our membership, translating national guidance into digestible summaries that encourage discussion and different ways of thinking.

This role sits within the Primary Care Network team, which brings together primary care with the rest of the health and care system, supporting, representing, and empowering our members to maximise the impact they have on patient care and drive change.

It is a part-time, 12-month role focused on building our network to incorporate the full breadth of primary care providers (specifically community pharmacy, optometry, dentistry and audiology) and establish an offer to members that capitalises on the opportunities to work more effectively across the primary care sectors as well as with other health and care providers.

With delegated commissioning of POD (pharmacy, optometry, and dentistry) to ICBs there is also an opportunity to work across the two networks to improve local commissioning of these services by bringing commissioners and providers together.

This will mean we are the only national organisation bringing together the whole of primary care, through providers and stakeholders, to focus on action rather than discussion.