This article is written as part of a promotional agreement between Scotland Excel and Healthcare News Scotland.

Experienced leaders with a drive to translate social care policy into creating systems that help deliver change are being invited to apply for new, senior roles within Scotland Excel, the national centre of procurement expertise for local authorities and health and social care partnerships.

Describing the work of the organisation’s social care team, Jennifer McKerrall, Strategic Commissioning Manager, said: “We are serving the people who serve the people”

“Our role is to deal with a lot of the complexity around contracts, fees and procurement that allow our members, Scotland’s 32 local authorities, to work with providers to focus on the part of the social care that really matters; supporting people.

”Since awarding our first contract for secure care in 2011 and our original focus being on children’s services, we now have quite a sizable portfolio of 14 national collaborative contracts across adult social care, children’s services and digital, worth around £1bn a year that local authorities, health and social care partnerships and our associate members (including housing associations and third sector partners) can use.”

Scotland Excel has begun a recruitment process to fill two newly created roles: a Service Manager for Adult Social Care and a Service Manager to lead the Children & Families, Digital and Intelligence (CFDI) service.

Jennifer says the new roles follow a restructure to adapt to the changing needs of Scotland Excel’s members – and to recognise the central role the organisation plays through procurement and commissioning in helping to deliver changes in policy and priorities:

“There was a clear recognition that we needed to do more, not just with our own policy colleagues but also some of our key partners such as the representative bodies in social care.

“If you take the planned National Care Service as one example, with its increased focus on ethical commissioning and procurement, there's lots of things that might be done differently and better. We want to have people involved in senior level stakeholder engagement to make sure we really are listening and we are helping shape what comes next.

“There's a wealth of really good feedback from people who provide services and access services. We can make sure that that's reflected in the contracts and the service specifications we draft.”

While the number of national contracts within Scotland Excel’s social care portfolio has grown, the organisation also has experience with a variety of different mechanisms and approaches such as best practice guidance and cost modelling tools. Looking forward, the organisation hopes to build on its current offering by exploring how to better support members with their own local commissioning. This includes plans to provide tailored development for commissioners in addition to the existing training provided by the Scotland Excel Academy.

The organisation has big aspirations to make improvements in critical areas such as the National Care Home Contract and is looking forward to new projects and partnerships such as the work to review commissioning and procurement of family-based support with the Scottish Government.

And Jennifer says one area of rapidly growing demand is to support the introduction of new digital technologies:

“There are some really interesting opportunities to grow our work in terms of the collaborative digital pipeline. We have just established a new specialist team to focus on this work, therefore there’s real scope to work with the team and external stakeholders to influence what the future of that looks like.  In social care, the Digital Team covers contracts like technology enabled care – systems that help people be more independent for longer.”  

Scotland Excel says in the job profiles that they are looking to be joined by people who are highly motivated, resilient and experts in collaboration.

“There’s no point in pretending that it’s not challenging working in this space with local authorities with very challenging budget positions alongside providers with equal challenges. There is a special sort of person who can navigate their way through, to find the best position when there are so many factors pushing and pulling in different directions.

“So you need to be someone who understands the power of collaboration, who can operate within a highly complex landscape, who respects all of the different parties involved, and who's pretty resilient.

“These are roles for people who are interested in having conversations to inform and influence how policy can translate into changes in delivery. They would suit all-rounders with a thorough understanding of procurement and commissioning generally, who are also pretty good with commercial information, comfortable reviewing complex analytics and can communicate complex themes through a variety of mechanisms to different audiences.

“No two days will be the same and, even within a single day, you will have a wide range of conversations with different people about different things so you need to be comfortable pivoting between different areas of work and prioritising. You’ll have responsibility for teams comprising highly experienced category managers and contract owners who are experts in their respective areas, as well as those in earlier stages of their careers. You’ll need to be an experienced coach and mentor who can tailor your approach appropriately.  

“Ultimately, it’s about working with others to really get into the detail of bigger picture policy, while recognising what it all can mean for people using services.”

 

Have a look at Scotland Excels’ recruitment pack for the roles of:

Service Manager - Adult Social Care; and

Service Manager - Children & Families, Digital and Intelligence.

For more information about Scotland Excel visit their website.

The closing date for applications for the two roles is midnight on Monday 29th July.

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