Change Project Manager (Band 8a)

The problem: In North West London alone, neurodevelopmental assessment waiting lists grow to over 8,000 children and young people each year. Children and families wait months while their needs escalate. The current diagnosis-led system is overwhelmed.

The solution: Our vision with needs profiling is to move away from a diagnosis-led medicalized culture towards a needs-led one that normalizes and addresses neurodevelopmental needs. We aspire to a child-led, digitally enabled conversation between pupil, parent and teacher — where strengths, needs and support are identified together. Early, tailored support comes first, with specialist MDT input wrapped around the child whenever needed, including diagnosis only if helpful. Similar solutions show promise in pioneering sites like Portsmouth and Cambridgeshire but haven’t yet been fully evaluated or digitally enabled. This work is also completely aligned with and enables the shifts to community delivered and holistic needs-based support outlined by both the SEND reforms and the neighbourhood integrated teams. We have the commitment of a coalition of families, schools, borough inclusion and early help teams and community child health teams who are determined to co-design and deliver this.

Requirements of the Change Project Manager role: As Change Project Manager you will bring all your energy, creativity, expertise, and empathy to bear in the development, execution, and management of this complex, co-designed system change. You will be an experienced project manager and programme delivery manager and an enterprising and entrepreneurial problem solver who can think laterally and navigate challenges. You will have a background in service design and transformation, especially in leveraging technology and data solutions to drive change and, ideally, will have worked on delivering solutions in health and social care. Our foundational principle for this change is that we will co-design and deliver it as a community network involving NHS, local authority, schools and families on an equal footing. You will contribute experience of and passion for engaging and facilitating diverse groups of stakeholders to come together and co-design and -deliver sustained change.

As one of a team of committed changemakers you will have the privilege of making a radical change to a broken system and unlocking the possibility of large-scale impact that allows families and the teams that support them to thrive. If, like us, you derive your energy from this work and can communicate your optimism and belief to others to help make difficult changemaking also fun and rewarding then you’ll be in the best place doing your best work.

About ICHP’s role: The Imperial College Health Partners (ICHP) team is supporting the system to co-design and deliver this pilot, enabling it with supporting technology, a full evaluation and sustainable growth. We are doing this as part of our wider Mission to support children and young people’s mental health and neurodevelopmental needs.