Welcome from Marsha Foster, Chief Executive

Thank you so much for your interest in this exciting opportunity to become the Chief Nursing Officer here at the Black Country Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust.

Our 3,900 staff provide a range of mental health, learning disability and community services to over 1.4m people living across the Black Country, and we are proud of our being rated “Good” by the CQC. Our Trust was created by the merger of two organisations in 2020 we now have an annual income of c£280m a year.  Our new organisation has facilitated extensive and exciting transformation and strategic development to enable us to better serve our local communities. Equity and inclusion are core to our values; we serve diverse and vibrant communities and we welcome and encourage applications from individuals from groups who are currently underrepresented at a senior level in our Trust.  We are keen to hear from leaders who share and demonstrate our values of Caring, Enabling, Working Together and Integrity.

We have recently become the Lead Provider for Mental Health, Learning Disabilities and Autism in the local system which provides a greater platform for the transformation of services for our populations. We are clear in our ambition to become an ‘Outstanding’ Trust, and are looking for a forward thinking and inclusive leader to provide inspirational, professional leadership to our nursing workforce. 

We have spent time introducing a new professional nursing structure into the Trust that supports the ambitions we have for our people and our service users, and we are keen for our new Chief Nurse to build on these foundations. Working across the Trust and our wider communities, the role offers the opportunity to work with staff, service users, carers, and partners to coproduce and develop our services, tackling health inequalities, improving patient experience and ensuring that we meet the changing and growing needs of our population.

We are seeking a transformational nursing leader with proven experience of leadership in complex, multi-stakeholder clinical environments and across a range of diverse healthcare services. You will have a track record of developing advanced nursing practice, embedding a quality improvement culture and providing inspirational leadership to a diverse and passionate workforce.  This role will suit an ambitious leader; we will offer you considerable autonomy and the opportunity to bring your whole self to the role whilst stretching and developing your leadership career within an open and supportive culture. 

If you feel that this is you then we would love to see an application from you. In the first instance please do contact our recruitment advisors at GatenbySanderson, Joanna Riley, Jim Canning or Emma Pickup via joanna.riley@Gatenbysanderson.com or 07554 050 236. I look forward to meeting you in the very near future.

Kind regards

Marsha Foster, Chief Executive