Care for your career

Who’s doing it? Malcolm Philip.

Where? Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health. The
charity works to improve quality of life for people with severe
mental health problems. It carries out research, development and
training to influence policy and practice.

Job description: To lead and manage new
workforce initiatives for mental health staff, including national
training programmes.

Skills/qualifications needed: Good
understanding of mental health workforce-related policy. At least
five years’ experience as senior NHS manager, or equivalent.

What’s good about the job? The pleasure is
working with like-minded people determined to make services better
for service users. My colleagues are dedicated, creative and
enthusiastic people who aren’t worn out with the pressures of
service delivery. I am in an organisation that encourages people to
think and challenges services to improve.

What’s bad about the job? Hearing about
underfunded statutory services, staff shortages, and poor
management. The gap between service policy and service provision is
a major concern. Hearing of poor experiences by service users and
carers can drive our team on, but also get them down.

Pay: £60-70K.

What’s the job like? A great opportunity to do
real development work on the mental health workforce, without the
distractions of numerous other responsibilities. There is a
workforce crisis which needs radical solutions. My job is enabling
our workforce development team to be creative in designing courses,
helping practice change, and looking to instill lasting change in
workforce skills, practice and attitudes. Our training is tailored
to have maximum impact on service users. We are working to heavily
involve service users in training. We are looking at how to
disseminate our good practice.