Director of Quality, Practice & Inclusion - Learning Disabilities, Autism & Mental Health in City of London

Reports to: Executive Director of Quality, Practice, and Inclusion

Salary: c.£85,000 per annum on a full-time permanent basis.

Location: Hybrid with regular office attendance in Balham and at other sites including visits to houses and locations across London, Brighton & Hove, and Essex.

Role Purpose: This new leadership role will ensure that the quality of support people experience at Certitude is consistently brilliant – not just safe and compliant, but life-enhancing. You will shape how we deliver outstanding quality, best practice, and inclusion across the organisation helping us shift from a traditional compliance mindset to a learning culture rooted in lived experience, evidence, innovation, and partnership. You will strengthen our approach to co-production and inclusion, ensuring that the people we support have choice and can influence decisions and that our presence in local communities reflects our commitment to citizenship, belonging, and equality. You will also ask bold questions to help us design the conditions for excellence, and demonstrate our impact through outcomes, experiences, and stories that reflect what truly matters to people.

Main Responsibilities:

• Build and lead a strong Quality, Practice, and Inclusion Team that sets high standards of practice, promotes reflective learning, and champions person‑centred, rights‑based support.
• Deliver our quality assurance and continuous improvement framework, aligning it to sector best practice, regulatory requirements and the CQC Single Assessment Framework.
• Champion a culture where learning, innovation and improvement are expected and celebrated - where teams feel safe to try new ideas, learn from experience, and share insight.
• Create meaningful ways to evidence and communicate what quality looks and feels like, using lived experience, outcomes data, qualitative learning and practice reflection.
• Support local teams to meet and exceed regulatory standards and commissioning expectations, developing proactive approaches to quality, risk, and improvement.
• Lead our Inclusion agenda with purpose and ambition, ensuring the voices of people we support shape services, decisions, strategy, and local community engagement.
• Coach and mentor leaders and teams to build confidence, capability, and ownership for quality, safeguarding, and excellent practice.
• Lead a team that connects practice and inclusion across local areas, strengthening community relationships and championing local presence and citizenship.
• Use data and insights intelligently - spotting patterns, identifying emerging risks, sharing learning, and turning intelligence into clear, proportionate action.
• Collaborate with peers across the organisation to embed quality in everything we do, from strategy to day‑to‑day practice.
• Drive continuous improvement and embed a culture where quality is everyone’s responsibility, not just the responsibility of one team.
• Focus on outcomes, impact, and experience and not just compliance, creating a feedback‑rich environment driven by what matters to people.
• Support teams to improve practice, reflect on learning, and strengthen the organisation’s overall approach to quality and safeguarding.
• Lead the development of person‑centred, rights‑based safeguarding approaches, working closely with colleagues and with people who have lived experience.
• Act as a role model for Certitude’s values and behaviours, demonstrating leadership that is inclusive, collaborative, authentic, and ambitious.
• Lead key projects and programmes that advance Certitude’s ambition to be a provider, employer, and a strategic partner of choice.
• Represent Certitude confidently and authentically in external forums, partnerships, networks, and events.
• Produce high‑quality reports and present at the Quality, Performance, and Compliance.

Personal Development: Engage fully in professional development and reflective practice, including learning, development and coaching support, regular one-to-one and review meetings with the Executive Director of Quality and Operations, completion of mandatory training, and modelling Certitude’s core values, behaviours, equality, diversity, health and safety standards, while demonstrating openness to change in a dynamic organisational environment.

Knowledge and Experience:

• Significant experience in a senior quality assurance, practice development, regulatory, or improvement role within social care or a related health or community sector.
• Proven ability to lead multi‑disciplinary teams and develop high‑performing, learning‑focused cultures.
• Experience of embedding continuous improvement frameworks and delivering measurable improvements in outcomes and practice.
• Strong track record in co‑production, user involvement, rights‑based practice, or inclusion‑focused initiatives.
• Experience of working with regulators, commissioners, and external partners, including producing high‑quality reports and evidence.
• Skilled in using data, insight and lived experience to identify themes, mitigate risks, and guide strategic decisions.
• Experience of leading safeguarding practice and embedding person‑centred safeguarding approaches.

Skills and Abilities:

• Able to build leadership credibility, rapport, and influence internally and externally.
• Able to work collaboratively and as part of a team.
• Able to work autonomously, you will be a highly motivated and emotionally resilient individual.
• Able to manage and motivate colleagues to achieve high levels of performance.
• Able to deal with ambiguity and change, comfortably managing risk and uncertainty.
• Highly effective written, verbal, and presentational communication skills, able to facilitate groups and present convincingly at all levels.
• Able to drive change in complex environments that require strong and sensitive stakeholder management.
• Passionate about own and others’ development.

Additional Terms of Appointment:

• Pension: 3% employers, 5% employee contributions.
• Annual leave 27 days rising to 29 with service.
• Life Assurance: 3 x salary.
• Sick Pay: 4 weeks full pay, increasing to 8 weeks full pay and 8 weeks half pay with service.
• Flexible Working: We are happy to discuss flexible working options.
• Employee Assistance Programme.
• Cycle to Work Scheme.