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June 7, 2010
Secondment opportunity at Department of Health in Mental Health Economics
Location: London
Salary: The range for the post is £46,698 to £60,962
Closing date for applications: 7th June 2010
Summary of the Job
Working as part of the Social Care Policy, Strategic Policy and Finance Team the post holder will provide analytical support to the Mental Health Division. This is a short term opportunity until March 2011
The Department
The Department of Health is responsible for health and personal social services in England.
Working as an analyst in DH offers the opportunity to work in highly motivated multi-disciplinary teams and to apply strong analytical and broader communication and management skills to a diverse range of policy challenges. Multidisciplinary analytical teams in DH are integrated into each business directorate providing analytical support for policy and delivery in Health and Care.
DH provides a dynamic and friendly working environment, and places a high value on diversity and flexible working practice.
Background
The DH QIPP programme provides the central driver for working with the NHS to deliver a series of national workstreams aimed at enabling productivity savings of £20 billion. The mental health community will need to make an important contribution to enable many of the national workstreams. To this end, an overarching QIPP and Mental Health Stakeholder Group has been established under the leadership of the SCLGCP Director of Mental Health and Learning Disabilities to ensure that there is a co-ordinated and coherent approach to this work.
Specifically, this will comprise establishing:
- Consistent Stakeholder narrative capturing the approach
- Core data analysis and collation of the evidence for identified mental health QIPP priority areas, including: Acute Care Pathways, Out of area treatment and Physical/mental health conditions
- Identifying delivery proposals and levels of activity at national, regional and local level
- Timescales for action
The role will also provide dedicated support for the Mental Health Division and NMHDU in developing priority mental health business cases as part of the imminent Spending Round.
This role will provide dedicated support for this process, supplementing and complementing the support provided by the SCLGCP Analytical Support Team. The core Analytical Team will focus on the internal analytical processes required to support the above. The additional resource will focus on the external facing work in support of and with contributions from NMHDU work programmes and other external partners.
The job
The key deliverables of the role will be:
To support the development of the Mental Health QIPP workstream by:
- Reviewing, collating and updating the data analysis and evidence base
for the identified mental health QIPP priority workstreams:
- Acute Care Pathway
- Out of Area Treatments (OATs)
- Physical/mental health conditions
- To co-ordinate externally procured mental health economic analytical work commissioned by and directly relevant to the mental health QIPP workstream
- To support the SCLGCP Mental Health Analytical Lead in
providing appropriate support to the Mental Health Division in
prioritising and delivering key analytical tasks required as part of the
approaching CSR/Budget. Specifically, this will include (as a priority)
providing analytical leadership for the development of the IAPT business
case as part of the CSR 2010 process, including producing:
- Developing a robust financial model
- An Economic Impact Assessment (IA)
- Securing Revenue Investment Branch (RIB)
The post will be a particularly good opportunity for an economist looking to broaden their experience and understanding of policy, and who is interested in working on a high-profile programme.
The post holder will formally report to Becky Henderson.
Key skills for the role
The essential skills required are as follows:
Specialist Economist skills
- Applies appropriate economic concepts or techniques to address problems
- Uses economic techniques to offer workable solutions
- Can identify opportunities for economic analysis to make a contribution to policy development and appraisal
- Keeps abreast of developments in economic theory and practice
- Is able to synthesis technical papers
- Communicates complex technical ideas and arguments in ways which non-economists can readily understand
- Gives objective advice based on appropriate evidence and analysis
Analysis and use of evidence - understanding and using evidence to inform better decision-making
- Identifies and uses various sources of evidence and feedback to support outputs
- Understands the validity, relevance and limitations of different sources of evidence
- Uses evidence to evaluate polices, projects and programmes
- Understands and can interpret the most commonly used methods for summarising data
- Engages with relevant experts to gather and evaluate evidence.
Financial management - understanding and using financial information to ‘manage through number’
- Can describe the organisation’s business model and identify own contribution to its financial objectives
- Ensures personal delivery against plan, and forecasts accurately. Sets and influences stretching targets for improving the value achieved from resource inputs (people budget and assets)
- Work confidently with financial data when making decisions: interpret trends, issues and risks in routine and, where appropriate, investment appraisals.
- Leads by example when incurring expenditure and managing business relationships and risks. Promotes and enforces appropriate business rules
- Engages with finance experts, and knows when to provide them with routine or exceptional information.
Programme & Project Management (PPM) - using PPM techniques appropriately to achieve results from policy development through to delivery of services to the citizen
- Understands and uses PPM techniques, including risk management
- Understands and contributes to definition and delivery of programme benefits and business case development
- Plans and delivers strong relationships with stakeholders ensuring that the organisation is a respected customer and provider
- Engages with PPM experts, and in acquisition projects, procurement/commercial experts
Policy making skills
- The ability to identify failures in the current system and offer alternative policy options;
- The ability to use appropriate analytical concepts or techniques to interpret and contribute to modelling, particularly understanding how the assumptions that underpin a model relate to the projections produced, is essential;
- The ability to translate policy steers into technical solutions, and technical solutions into policy, is essential;
- Contract management skills, and particularly the ability to ensure that products are delivered on time, are essential;
- Good writing skills and the ability to translate complex specialist information into plain English for a range of different, non-specialist audiences are essential;
- Good oral communication skills and the ability to explain complex information during presentations and in meetings are essential;
- Political awareness, and the ability to see the wider political and policy implications of an issue are essential;
- Good people skills are essential.
Key Experience
- Experience of writing specifications for modelling is desirable;
- Experience of working on health or social care policy is desirable.
Selection competences
Selection will be by paper sift and interview based on the PSG based competences of:
- Leadership
- People Management
- Programme and project management
- Analysis and use of evidence
Contact for further information
Those seeking more information should speak to Becky Henderson on 020-797-24470 or mobile 07825733616. Please note I am on leave from 28th of May until 8th of June 2010.
