Senior Complaints Officer

Step into a place where exceptional care, patients, culture, and careers come together.

Explore our current vacancies and take your first step toward making a real difference.

Join us. Make a difference. Be part of Team LGT.

Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust, (LGT), is a community-focused provider of local and acute care, delivering high-quality services to over one million people living across the London boroughs of Lewisham, Greenwich, and Bexley. We provide whole-life care and are here to support our communities to live healthier lives as well as taking care of them when they need us the most.

Employing almost 7,500 colleagues, affectionately known as Team LGT, we provide services at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich, University Hospital Lewisham, and at over a dozen community settings in Lewisham. We also provide some services at Queen Mary’s Hospital in Sidcup.

We have recently launched our new vision and values to mark the LGT10 – the tenth anniversary of our Trust forming in 2013. Our trust vision is to be exceptional. In the quality of our patient care; our support for colleagues; and in the difference we make through our partnerships and in our communities.

Our hospitals and community sites provide a wide range of inpatient and outpatient services, as well as emergency and planned care. The Trust is rated as “good” or “outstanding” in over three-quarters of the services inspected by the Care Quality Commission.

Every year our work includes performing 10,000 procedures in our theatres; bringing seven and a half thousand new lives into the world; carrying out 570,000 visits to patients in their homes or communities and providing emergency care for more than 300,000 patients arriving in our busy Urgent and Emergency Departments.

LGT is a centre for the education and training of medical students enrolled with King’s College London’s GKT School of Medical Education. We are a training centre for nurses, midwives and allied health professionals. We are pioneering new roles that will support the changing needs of our patients and are one of the largest employers of physician associates in the country.

We are committed to working with our partners to deliver the best outcomes for our local communities. This means playing an active role in the South East London Integrated Care System (ICS), and in formal partnerships including the South East London Acute Provider Collaborative, provider partnerships with our local mental health trusts and borough-based boards of the ICS in Bexley, Greenwich and Lewisham.

Job overview

The post holder is accountable to the Associate Director of Quality and Governance but report to the Concerns and Complaints Manager.

The post holder will respond to compliments, concerns and complaints relating to services offered by Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust. The post holder will ensure that the most complex/high profile complaint case are managed in a sensitive and timely manner through close working with clinical and non-clinical staff across the Trust. This will include complaints that have exceeded initial timescales

Main duties of the job

The post holder will ensure statutory and organisational requirements are met, that complaints are investigated thoroughly and impartiality and that all complainants receive a full, high quality and timely response in accordance with the Department of Health’s key principles of complaints handling.

• Responding
• Improving

Working for our organisation

Our people are our greatest asset. When we feel supported and happy at work, this positivity reaches those very people we are here for, the patients. Engaged employees perform at their best and our Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) initiatives contribute to cultivate a culture of engagement. We have four staff networks, a corporate EDI Team and a suite of programmes and events which aim to insert the 5 aspirations:

• Improving representation at senior levels of staff with disabilities, from black, Asian, and ethnic minorities background, identify as LGBTQ+ and women, through improved recruitment and leadership development
• Widening access (anchor institution) and employability
• Improving the experience of staff with disability
• Improving the EDI literacy and confidence of trust staff through training and development
• Making equalities mainstream

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Complaints provide a vital insight about people’s experiences and how these services can be improved. Complainants must be informed of service improvements that have been made a result of their complaint and the Trust must learn from its complaints.

The post holder will also provide day to day advice, expertise and guidance for the concerns and complaints teams acting as a point of contact for the team to deal workflow issues. The post holder will elevate issues or concerns to the Concerns and Complaints Manager.

Key Result Areas & Performance:

· Take on a caseload of complaints including complex complaints and complaints that have exceeded the initially prescribed time in which the Trust expected to have resolved them.

· Work as part of the central complaints team, alongside specific clinical groups, and in liaison with complainants, advocates and staff at all levels within the Trust.

· Provide expert advice and guidance on regulation and casework issues to the concerns and complaints team. Co-ordinate responses to the most complex complaints received by the Trust and, in doing so, ensuring that each complaint is listened to, understood, properly considered, appropriately responded to and learnt from.

· Draft complaint response letters for the most complex complaints for signature by the Chief Executive.

· Support the teams' reporting work by regularly auditing the use of the Ulysses complaints module.

· Analyse complaints received, identifying trends, themes and opportunities for improving the quality of the Trust’s service and experiences of service users.

· Escalate complex and/or high-profile patient complaints and where necessary liaise directly with service providers and clinical staff on behalf of patients.

· Contribute to complaints reports/KPI dashboards.

· Provide advice, support and guidance to divisions on resolving concerns and complaints via local resolution.

· Chair local resolution meetings between complainants and divisional staff.

· Train complaints staff and participate in training other staff groups across the Trust on how to successfully deal with complaints.

· Organise the rota to ensure the service is covered during leave or absence of complaints officers.

· Deputise in the absence of the Concerns & Complaints Manager

Qualifications

• Post graduate or equivalent experience within a similar role
• Significant expert knowledge of complaint process and current legislation.
• GCSE (or equivalent) at grade C or above in English
• Evidence of continuing professional development.
• European Computer Driving License (ECDL) or equivalent

Experience

• Experience of working within the NHS
• Experience of writing and communicating to patients or the public
• Experience of handling distressing situations
• Experience of delivering presentations
• Experience of working with all levels of staff
• Significant demonstrable experience of working in a Complaints role

Knowledge and Skills

• Excellent English written and verbal skills
• Ability to analyse complex problems and identify solutions, undertaking trend & thematic analysis as required
• Experience of using Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel
• Excellent presentation skills
• In-depth knowledge of the NHS complaints procedure

Personal Qualities

• Excellent inter-personal skills
• Ability to deal with angry or distressed people
• Ability to stay calm in difficult situations
• Excellent organisational skills
• Ability to prioritise
• Ability to work autonomously and in a team
• Ability to think on your feet
• Tact and diplomacy

As a local employer and anchor institution we work closely with our community to recruit locally and we welcome applications from the widest variety of people to ensure our workforce are reflective of the local communities which we serve. We encourage all suitable candidates to apply including if you are Black, Asian or other ethnic minorities, live with a disability (visible or not) or are LGBT+. We have a number of active staff networks including Disability, LGBT+, Multicultural Inclusion and Women’s staff networks to bring staff together and celebrate diversity across our whole workforce.

Please note: Information provided during recruitment and pre‑employment checks must be accurate. Misrepresentation may be investigated as fraud and could lead to withdrawal from the process, professional sanctions, or criminal action.

Please note: that sponsorship under the Skilled Worker route is subject to Trust allocation and UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) approval.

Use of AI in recruitment: We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support the initial review of applications against the essential criteria for this role. Where AI is used, it will support rather than replace human decision-making, and applications will remain subject to appropriate human review.

Employer certification / accreditation badges

The postholder will have access to vulnerable people in the course of their normal duties and as such this post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service to check for any previous criminal convictions.

Application numbers

To ensure fairness and manageable shortlisting processes, some vacancies may have an application cap. This means the vacancy will close once a set number of applications have been received even if this happens before the advertised closing date.

#J-18808-Ljbffr