Welcome and thank you for your interest in learning more about North Yorkshire Council and this exciting new role of Corporate Director Health and Adult Services.
After nearly 12 years, our current Director Richard Webb is progressing his career as Chief Executive for City of York Council. We wish him well in his new role and look forward to continuing to work closely with him as we now look to the future and the recruitment of our new director to lead our next chapter.
North Yorkshire is England's largest county and a beautiful, vibrant place to live and work.
We have a reputation for delivering high quality services. Our health and adults social care services are nationally recognised for their excellence, currently rated joint third highest performing authority in the country in the recent Care Quality Commission inspection and the subject of an excellent Public Health Peer Review. This role plays a pivotal role in leading Public Health, Adult Social Care and our partnerships with the NHS.
Whilst we have a strong track record, we are committed to ongoing continuous improvement to ensure that our services are of high quality, impacting positively on the health and wellbeing of the communities that we serve whilst demonstrating good value for public money.
It is an ideal time for a new Director to join us as we;
- extend our much-lauded Extra Care Housing programme for older people and expand that into a broader range of support for younger adults with mental health issues, autism or learning disabilities
- implement our new adult social care service re-structure creating specialised county wide services, staff are enthusiastic about the changes as it provides distinctive career pathways, enhances localised services and further develops strength-based practice.
- embed our new North Yorkshire Health Collaborative, a formal partnership between the largest Integrated Care Board and the authority, with wider NHS, Voluntary and Community sector and care sector involvement to oversee and lead £590m investment in prevention and community services, aiming to improve outcomes, and tackle inequalities and joined-up working.
- investment of up to £60m in a new generation of five Care and Support Hubs providing intermediate care and specialist dementia care.
- the next stages in our Prevention programme across Public Health and Adult Social Care, including expanding our work with voluntary sector community anchors across the county.
- developing services for people facing multiple disadvantage due to mental health, substance use and transient housing.
At the heart of our improvement plans is a determination to put the voices and aspirations of people with lived experience at the heart of what we do. We have co-produced our Health and Adult Service Involvement Framework and our goal is to grow co-production in our daily practice, our service improvement and our service developments. Our ambition is to show what our lived experience experts mean when they say that “Co-production is a super-power”.
Our new Director will capitalise on these opportunities and drive forward our plans.
Whilst what we do, we do well, we are not complacent and with true Yorkshire resilience we constantly strive for further improvement, to meet growing complexity of need and significant shifts in demand for our critical services. We have a great deal more to learn, more to do for our residents this is where we will look to our new Director to shape the vision.
We have celebrated our two-year anniversary following local government reform and the merging of the eight district, borough and county councils to form North Yorkshire Council in April 2023.
As the county council was the continuing authority, health and adults services were unchanged by this structural transformation. However, unification brings the opportunity to improve localised services in this great county and secure greater investment through our devolution deal for North Yorkshire. The devolution deal for York and North Yorkshire could potentially unlock around £2.4 billion of investment over 30 years, with a focus on improving the economic prosperity and future long-term opportunities for all residents. Health and Adult Services (HAS) is the council’s largest directorate and working closely with other council departments, as well as wider partners, is key to achieving its objectives.
We are making the most of being a new unitary council, with a stronger Public Health contribution to shaping the new countywide leisure and active well-being service and plans being developed to build more, better homes for older and disabled people, and to improve support to people with multiple, complex health, housing and care issues in their lives. We are also working with colleagues on issues such as food affordability and supply and climate change. And we are strengthening our Health Protection services.
There are significant challenges facing the service and the organisation as a whole. We are currently in the process of delivering a transformation programme which is an ambitious programme to realign the council in the face of reduced funding levels, increasing complexity and demand for services and harness the opportunities that emerging technologies bring. The only way to address the magnitude of the challenge is by an equally ambitious programme of change. It is more important than ever that we work in genuine partnership, are crystal clear about our priorities, and are resolutely focussed on improving outcomes.
We use our well-managed Medium Term Financial Strategy to seek out and tackle issues head on. For many of our residents, the quality of life is high but the needs of communities across our localities are diverse with some areas experiencing significant deprivation and health inequalities, alongside the rural nature of the county which impacts on accessibility.
This provides a great foundation for a new Corporate Director of Health and Adult Social Care Services to further shape exciting, innovative approaches, making your mark in this role and on a national stage.
Ideal for a driven health and adult social care leader wanting to step up to the leadership challenge. You will be welcomed by strong corporate and service teams with a high-performance culture and significant resources that will enable you to tackle issues head on, develop innovative practice and really make your mark here.
You will be welcomed by Members, Management Board colleagues and a corporate suite of support services, that will provide support and critical challenge as we are united as one council: jointly ambitious for the health and wellbeing of our residents across our region.
We are now looking for an imaginative, robust and influential Corporate Director to drive change, help define our future direction, influence key stakeholders and support service improvement in the Health and Adult Social Care Services directorate and across the breadth of the authority.
Want to learn more?
We encourage further conversations to explore this opportunity and look forward to discussing your interest further.
Richard Flinton Chief Executive, North Yorkshire Council
