Start Well Communications Manager

The Start Well programme is a major change to maternity, neonatal and children's surgical services across North Central London. It follows several years of work with patients, colleagues and partners to improve care and outcomes for babies, children, pregnant women and pregnant people.

Plans agreed in 2025 include more investment in services at University College London Hospitals, Barnet Hospital, North Middlesex University Hospital and Whittington Hospital. The birthing suites at Edgware Birth Centre will close, with expanded antenatal and postnatal care remaining on site. Maternity and neonatal services at the Royal Free Hospital will also close in future, although this will not happen for several years.

Whittington Health's CEO is the Senior Responsible Officer for delivery, and the programme team is hosted by Whittington Health. The work includes major building projects, new clinical pathways and workforce changes, while services continue to run safely.

Main duties of the job

Communications planning and support- Develop a comprehensive communications and engagement strategy for theimplementation of the Start Well programme - on a phase by phase basis.- Ensure an integrated internal and external communications plan that builds awareness,confidence, understanding and readiness across all phases of the programme.- Ensure communications and engagement planning is fully aligned with programmemilestones

Communications and engagement delivery- Implement the agreed communications plan to a high standard.- Develop clear, accessible and compelling content to explain the purpose, benefits and impact of Start Well delivery, translating complex technical information into meaningfulmessages for clinical and non-clinical audiences.

Change and adoption- Support the development of a strong network of champions, advocates and clinicalleaders who can articulate the benefits of the Start Well programme and model positiveengagement.Partnership workingBuild strong working relationships with programme leads, clinical teams and corporatefunctions to ensure joined-up messaging.

Whittington Health serves a richly diverse population and works hard to ensure that all our services are fair and equally accessible to everyone. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the way we look after our staff. We aim to employ a workforce which is as representative as possible of this population, so we are open to the value of differences in age, disability, gender, marital status, pregnancy and maternity, race, sexual orientation, and religion or belief. The Trustbelieves that as a public sector organisation we have an obligation to have recruitment, training, promotion and other formal employment policies and procedures that are sensitive to these differences. We think that by doing so, we are better able to treat our patients as well as being a better place to work.