Quality Assurance and Market Support Lead

About Us

Are you passionate about quality in care and supporting a strong, sustainable social care market and workforce? We're looking for a Quality Assurance & Market Support Lead to play a key role in ensuring high‑quality, affordable care is available to residents across West Sussex.

Adult social care is committed to making a difference to the people of West Sussex. You can help us do that. We are looking for people who get things done. An enthusiastic, driven, and committed professional is needed to act as an officer for our Quality Assurance and Market Support team.

The Quality Assurance and Market Support team focuses on the quality and safety of the services and places where care is delivered. They support quality assurance and improvement in services across the county and does projects to drive improvement and maintain standards across adult social care. Current projects are focused on workforce, recruitment and retention.

Team members are genuinely valued, respected and there is an emphasis on work life balance. Hybrid working helps us deliver a great service and we enjoy the flexibility this provides. QAMS work across the county and work in offices regularly in Littlehampton and Chichester and Horsham. Frequent travel is expected to WSCC offices and to services and other locations across the county and is an expectation within the role.

West Sussex values and nurtures talent, and we're committed to helping you fulfil your potential. You will be offered a supportive, friendly and collaborative environment to grow and develop your career and skills. We strive to improve our ways of working, so putting your ideas forward, however big or small, will be fully encouraged by colleagues and our experienced leadership team.

About The Job

Salary

£48,226 - £51,356 per annum

Working Pattern

Full time, 37 hours per week

Contract Type

Permanent

Location

County Hall, Chichester - hybrid working with regular required travel across the county.

Interview Dates

26th & 29th June

As Quality Assurance & Market Support Lead, you will play a key role in ensuring that high‑quality, affordable adult social care is available to residents across West Sussex. Working proactively with both existing and emerging social care providers, you will help shape a responsive, sustainable market that delivers safe, effective, and person‑centred care.

You will build strong relationships across the health and social care system, using your knowledge and expertise to support service improvement and quality assurance. This role requires experience across different types of Adult Social Care services and a confident, collaborative approach to working with providers.

The team works together in the office one day per week (Wednesday). The remainder of the week will involve regular travel across the county, as you will be working directly with a range of Adult Social Care services and providers.

The role will lead the design and delivery of a range of sector‑wide and targeted programmes and interventions across the Adults and Health Directorate and with commissioned social care providers. You may also line manage and support Quality Assurance & Market Support Officers working on different projects across the team.

We strongly encourage you to have an informal conversation with Isla‑Kate Morris (isla-) before applying, particularly if you are unsure whether this role is right for you.

Experience and Skills

Please read the job description and cover how you meet each of the key skills, qualifications and experience in your application.

What you'll need to succeed

• Have confidence to develop and deliver creative solutions in a complex environment.

Have the ability to use your own judgement and seek out opportunities which have the maximum impact.

• Have experience and skills to work with care providers and the wider health and social care sector with detailed knowledge of regulatory requirements and inspection and/or assessment frameworks.
• Have detailed knowledge, skills and experience in adult social care.
• Have experience of leading projects delivered by the team or through collaboration and partnership working with internal and external stakeholders
• Have experience of working with a quality assurance framework or assessing against best practice and standards and driving improvement in quality, to support and ensure that care services across West Sussex are delivering to the highest standards.
• Have effective influencing and negotiating skills and conflict resolution.
• Have experience in analysing and interpreting highly complex and varied information and data to research, develop, present and deliver plans over the long term.
• Be able to take the initiative, work autonomously and organise your own workload effectively
• Have experience in line management of staff members as you will directly line manage a Quality Assurance and Market Support Officer, as well as offering support to other Officers in the team.

Rewards and Benefits

For a full list of the benefits offered to you as a West Sussex County Council employee you can find them on our Rewards and Benefits page.

Further Information

We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults. This post is subject to an enhanced DBS check, 5 years referencing and a health check.

West Sussex County Council is an equal opportunities employer committed to promoting an environment that is inclusive and free from all forms of unlawful or unfair discrimination and values the diversity of its people. We actively welcome applications from people of all backgrounds and take every possible step to ensure that no individual will be disadvantaged.

For information regarding your eligibility to apply for this role under our Disability or Veteran's Guaranteed Interview Scheme (if you meet all the essential criteria), this can be found on our application help page.

Note for Recruitment Agencies

We prefer to hire people directly, but we do have a supplier list for when we need a helping hand. We'll be in touch directly if we need you!