Job Summary
A fantastic opportunity has arisen to join St George's University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust as Deputy General Manager for the Children's Services Directorate. You will be an individual with an excellent track‑record in operational management, combined with the commitment and leadership skills to deliver our ambitious and exciting vision for children’s services for South West London and beyond.
Every year the number of children and young people St George's cares for in our hospital and our community continues to grow. We provide comprehensive health services from birth, throughout childhood and supporting transition into adult life. We operate through six clinical Care Groups: Children's Acute and General Medicine, Children's Specialist Medicine, Children's Surgery, Children's Neurodisability and Neurodevelopmental, Newborn Services and Paediatric Intensive Care.
You will work closely with the General Manager, Head of Nursing, Clinical Director, Care Group Lead(s) and Matrons to provide operational management and contribute to the strategic development for Care Groups within the Children’s Services Directorate. This includes ensuring that national and corporate targets / objectives are translated into operational plans and providing clear and consistent leadership to staff in the delivery of those plans.
Main duties of the job
The Deputy General Manager will work closely with the General Manager, Clinical Director and Head of Nursing to support and oversee the delivery of clinical services across the directorate. This will include supporting Service Managers and Care Group Leads with day‑to‑day operational service delivery, managing risk, using data to inform decision making, and leading on a range of service improvements to improve the quality and accessibility of our services.
The Deputy General Manager is responsible for the operational delivery of all aspects of the Directorate. They will directly manage the performance of the three care groups and will work closely with other management teams to achieve the required outputs.
The Deputy General Manager is responsible for the performance of staff whose main base is in Children’s Services. Each Directorate has a unique combination of challenges to overcome in order to ensure that St. George’s delivers an outstanding clinical service. The Deputy General Manager works as a peer with the Lead Clinician and Matron in each Care Group and works closely with the Clinical Director.
The Deputy General Manager takes responsibility for operational issues in the Directorate particularly the management of issues around acute care and bed flows. The Deputy General Manager will deputise for the General Manager as required.
About Us
St. George’s Hospital is a large multi‑specialty facility based in South West London, offering a wide range of adult, paediatric and neonatal services. It is co‑located with a medical school – St. George’s, University of London. Children managed at SGH are either local or regional tertiary patients. Our Accident and Emergency department is seeing steadily increasing attendances, and our inpatient emergency admissions are also increasing. Outpatient referrals have also steadily increased for local children, reflecting the growing young population in SW Thames. Tertiary children’s services are offered by consultants based at SGH in gastroenterology, endocrinology, respiratory medicine, neurology, oncology, infectious diseases and PICU.
A number of our services are members of established clinical networks which bring together doctors, nurses and other clinicians from a range of healthcare providers working to improve the quality of services for patients. These include the South Thames Paediatric Network and the South‑west London and Surrey Trauma Network, for which St George’s Hospital is the designated major trauma centre.
Details
Date posted: 20 January 2026
Pay scheme: Agenda for change
Band: Band 8b
Salary: £72,921 to £83,362 a year p.a. pro rata inclusive of HCAS (Inner)
Contract: Permanent
Working pattern: Full‑time
Reference number: 200‑7715269‑DE‑DG
Job locations: St George’s Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Blackshaw Road, London, SW16 5HB
Job responsibilities
We are looking for someone who will bring excellent operational management experience and skills, with a strong interest in innovation, service improvement and development, and a commitment to collective leadership. You will be highly collaborative, systematic and rigorous in your approach, with very well developed communication skills and high levels of emotional intelligence. We would like to encourage applicants from all backgrounds.
In this post you will work alongside medical, nursing and allied health professional staff as well as the core teams of Care Group Leads, Matrons and Service Managers developing excellent services. A strong track‑record of successful delivery is essential as is a passionate desire to make a difference to children, young people and their families.
Person Specification
Essential – Qualifications
* Degree or equivalent professional qualification
* Postgraduate management qualification or equivalent knowledge gained through experience
* Evidence of continuing professional development
Desirable – Qualifications
* Masters Degree or working towards one
Essential – Skills/Abilities
* Proven conceptual and analytical skills, including the ability to make and take decisions after analysis of options and implications.
* Use advanced analytical and judgement skills including understanding and application of complex statistical and numerical data.
* Highly developed specialist knowledge and experience of developing services across the patient pathway.
* Excellent inter‑personal and communications skills, with a track record in consistently delivering performance targets and writing complex business cases and policies.
* Able to set out conclusions and recommendations clearly and concisely in a range of written and verbal styles to reflect the needs of the audience.
* Able to influence and engage people in different settings from one to one to large audiences that may be hostile or antagonistic.
Essential – Experience
* Extensive operational management experience in large complex organisations, some of which should be in health care, including design, development, implementation and management of operational change in a multiple stakeholder environment and experience of passing on ideas successfully to others.
* Extensive experience of performance management and including delivery of key NHS access targets.
* Demonstrable success in delivering change and performance with and through your management and clinical teams, by engaging them in the strategic direction and delivery plans, establishing clear work priorities with them, delegating effectively, ensuring a capability to deliver, monitoring performance and giving feedback.
* Significant experience of working with a range of professionals and in a range of environments. Experience working across multiple organisations to secure change; proven track record of overcoming obstacles to change and facilitating progress of projects.
* Experience of facilitating group discussions and supporting training, education and development opportunities.
* Experience of influencing staff at all levels to ensure project objectives are owned by all members of the team including users and stakeholders.
* Evidence of the ability to involve teams in analysis of situation and solution development; persuade teams to take on new ways of working and to constructively challenge the status quo.
Desirable – Experience
* Experience of working with services in an Acute healthcare setting.
* Experience of working with commissioners, including contract and performance monitoring.
Essential – Knowledge
* Highly developed knowledge and understanding of organisational development and change.
* Service quality and quality management.
* Current changes and developments within the NHS.
* Change management theory.
Essential – Other requirements
* Commitment to equal opportunities.
* Commitment to providing improvement to services for patients.
* Able to relate and adapt to the perspective of others.
* Professionally credible. Confident in dealing with both clinicians and senior management staff.
* Calm and rational approach to situations where conflict is likely.
* A positive ‘can‑do’ attitude towards challenges.
Disclosure and Barring Service Check
This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.
Employer details
Employer name: St George's University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Address: St George's Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Blackshaw Road, London, SW16 5HB
Employer's website: https://www.stgeorges.nhs.uk/ (Opens in a new tab)
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