Directorate Support Manager

Job summary

The Directorate Support Manager provides essential operational, governance and service-improvement leadership across the entire Adult Community Services Directorate, ensuring safe, effective and efficient delivery of community services. The role requires a strong understanding of the operational functions of the Virtual Ward and Urgent Community Response (UCR), both of which are critical pathways supporting admission avoidance, early supported discharge and urgent community care performance.

The post holder leads and line-manages the central administrative team, ensuring high-quality data, efficient scheduling, accurate monitoring and strong communication across all services, including Planned Care (District Nursing) and Rapid Access to Social Care (RASC).

A key part of the role is overseeing governance, compliance, incident management, risk processes and business continuity, promoting a culture of safety, transparency and continuous improvement.

The DSM also drives service improvement and operational efficiency, supporting redesign, optimisation and development of services across multiple community sites within the Directorate.

Main duties of the job

Provide day-to-day operational leadership across Adult Community Services.

Coordinate workflows, staffing, scheduling and resources across multiple sites.

Resolve operational issues and maintain service continuity.

Lead clear communication across clinical, admin and managerial teams.

Oversee Virtual Ward, UCR and wider pathway performance.

Support continuous improvement and identify inefficiencies.

Monitor incidents, risks and support investigations.

Maintain risk registers, mitigation plans and escalation.

Support audits, assurance and quality improvement actions.

Ensure Information Governance compliance.

Maintain business continuity plans and service resilience.

Support CQC and regulatory readiness.

Lead admin, reception and secretarial teams.

Support workforce planning, recruitment and workload distribution.

Promote team development and professionalism.

Ensure high-quality data, activity capture and reporting.

Manage IT access, smartcards and system issues.

Use data to support performance and target delivery.

Support service redesign and efficiency improvements.

Align service development with Trust strategy.

Act as a change agent embedding evidence-based practice.

Monitor demand and support income-linked activity.

Represent the Directorate at Trust-wide meetings.

Build strong stakeholder relationships.

Promote a safety culture, flexibility and high professional standards.

About us

The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust is one of the largest NHS trusts in the West Midlands providing primary, acute and community services and we are incredibly proud of the diversity of both our staff and the communities we serve. We are building a workforce that can help us to fulfil our values, improve the quality of care for patients, and solve the health care problems of tomorrow. We're passionate about the value that diversity of thinking and lived experience brings in enabling us to become a learning organisation and leader in delivering compassionate care for our patients.

We are delighted that we have been rated as "Good" by CQC. We have achieved numerous awards; The Nursing Times Best Diversity and Inclusion Practice and Best UK Employer of the Year for Nursing Staff in 2020.

The Trust is a supportive working environment committed to creating flexible working arrangements that suit your needs and as such will consider all requests from applicants who wish to work flexibly.