Director of Lived Experience role at NHS on £115K

[ImJustMadAboutSaffron]

www.healthjobsuk.com/job/UK/Staffordshire/Stafford/Midlands_Partnership_NHS_Foundation_Trust/Director/Director-v4828381

What the absolute hell? Words fail me.

The job overview was pretentious bollocks.
I think they are looking for someone who can spiel out shit speak like the job description
..Most likely someone who has never been a Dr or Nurse or used the NHS.

It definitely comes down to getting the right person and it would be a huge missed opportunity - and waste of money - to not to get someone with proper relevant experience.

There is value in collating meaningful feedback from service users, the money would be better spent compensating those who give their time to provide feedback and/or an effective system (not bloody healthwatch) rather than this. It sounds like it's written with someone specific in mind though tbh, there won't be many people at all who tick all of their boxes.

This role is an incredible step forward and is not 'woke' in the slightest.

Within mental health services there is a huge really positive push towards increasing the lived experience workforce. A specific term when thinking about mental health services that has a huge evidence base behind it (showing the monetary saving for the NHS - hence the continued expansion of this workforce).

These staff are predominantly frontline clincians, working in inpatient units, CMHT's, etc. All of them have their own personal experience of mental health difficulties, many of whom have accessed secondary care and even inpatient units. As a result these staff are often treated fairly shockingly and are very underpaid in a large part because they have a disability.

If we object to the director position and salary - then it would make sense for us to also remove the director of nursing? the director of medicine? After all, they aren't frontline clinicians? By removing all the directors of each NHS trust we could employ many more band 6 staff?

I work in mental health in a clinical role and I so value my colleagues who do these roles they bring so much value to the people they work with.

It's time the NHS got rid of different health trusts so they could reduce the layers of bureaucracy, too many executives & not enough staff actually doing what matters, caring for patients.

Oh good God😭. Ffs. I went to uni with someone now making £200k per year plus out of the nhs in a ‘management position’. They work 9-5 and their job is no more than common sense decisions (heavily advised on by accountants and lawyers etc). Anyone with an ounce of critical thinking could do it. THIS is why it needs overhaul. As per usual people at the top being paid waaaay more than their worth, to hell with everyone else.

I don't think this post is about just collating feedback.
It is about ensuring that every part of the service is designed around the needs of the service users, including accessibly, lack of judgment, flexibility, relationships, assessment of need and ending services properly and so much more - and people with lived experience have so much expertise to give in the design and in the delivery of services. And the proper direction of that should be valued.

There’s a difference between an experience someone has lived through and one they have experience reading about or seeing on telly.

Example: Chocolate

Lived experience would be having experience of actually tasting chocolate.

Vicarious experience would be watching an advert about the chocolate.

Important distinction because we can’t have lived experiences of everything. So it has to be relevant lived experience.

Jobs for the boys. I’m sure they already know exactly which service user is getting this job.

No, it wouldn’t. Stafford hospital was then run my Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, and is now run by University Hospital North Midlands Trust. Midlands Partnership NHS Foundation Trust was formed on the 1 June 2018 following the acquisition of Staffordshire and Stoke on Trent Partnership NHS Trust by South Staffordshire and Shropshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust (taken from CQC).

I disagree. Recently started working in a large public sector org where one significant area of work has been completely neglected strategically while there was firefighting going on elsewhere. As a result, people “at the chalk face” haven’t been supported or had the framework/direction to make good decisions, resulting in a multi-million pound budget deficit and poor outcomes and services for vulnerable residents.

Good strategy should make frontline staff’s lives easier. Sadly all too often when this kind of strategy work is done it ends up like @pursuedbyablackdog described. But that doesn’t make it a completely pointless exercise.

@Odessafile thank you for the link to the advert for a Head of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion.

This is a key senior which at its heart will help us continue our journey in creating a truly inclusive culture where everyone can be their true selves at work and ebsuring fair access to our services and improve the outcomes and experiences of our service users. people can be their authentic self and where access to and experience of our

(I haven’t cut off the end of the paragraph)

I hope that’s Indeed’s description rather than the one provided by the NHS.

I feel like I’ve just stumbled into the DM comment section reading most of these responses

There are countless posts on MN where posters say that have had terrible experiences of care in the NHS. Many women here experiencing traumatic birth etc

so the NHS looks to take this seriously, puts in some infrastructure to manage this better and yet people aren’t happy with that either.

you cannot win.

And some of the posts here about people on £100k in the NHS are insane.

believe me if you are on £100k in the NHS you have serious, significant responsibility and accountability, ie could go to court for your actions.

NHS Trusts are huge organisations. Mine has a £700 million turnover and 8600 staff. Do you honestly expect the Board to be on £25k to run that?

I've been sectioned twice and extensively accessed support in the community, my lived experience will be hugely different to everyone else's, no matter if I somehow managed to have the relevant experience alongside this (very bold of them to assume someone does) it would stil be more beneficial to have the input of many people- just my opinion. The advert also says people who have experienced a power imbalance- erm everyone that's accessed a service then!

Corporate roles also have to compete with the wider market so the salaries have to be more enticing. The nhs has a monopoly on healthcare staff largely which means less incentive to offer a competitive and fair wage.

What a waste of money. Maybe we should all apply and Spam them with applications full of meaningless drivel.

Lots of us have heaps of experience living, and plenty of health conditions! A few of our lives could be improved if we earned £115k and could afford to put the heating on!

They have 15 Directors already. They serve a population of 1.5 million people. I think the people defending this on here are sensible and are sick of not receiving basic care or work in the NHS and are old enough to remember when the NHS ran better with less senior management in non jobs.

And almost certainly didn’t come out of the NHS budget.

The next time we have a thread on here complaining about people’s experience of the NHS we’re going to need to remember this thread and point out that fixing some of those things is a waste of time and people should just be glad they got treated and forget everything else.

Yet plenty of people are pondering whether this role is the best way, not whether there should be a more effective way to incorporate feedback in decision making at every level.

Why not? I work in a different industry but at a similar level yet have been recieving care from the CMHT for many years. Contrary to popular belief you can live with severe mental illness and function extremely well in society.

Same here. A lot of people are showing how ignorant they are. There are many issues with how the NHS is structured and led, but this post has the potential to be worthwhile.

Meanwhile the band 2,3,4,5 admin teams are drowning and paid barely above minimum wage!

In my organisation lived experience colleagues are band 6 and above.