Job overview

This is a fixed term contract for up to 13 months, commencing February 2026.

Internal applicants who wish to be considered for a secondment opportunity should discuss with their line manager the suitability of a possible secondment

This is an exciting opportunity to join the leadership team of our innovative and progressive School Nursing Service. 

Are you a dynamic Specialist Community Public Health Nurse (School Nurse) seeking a new challenge? Do you have the passion to be a leader and to inspire colleagues in the specialist field of public health nursing; working with children and young people to improve their health?  Do you have a special interest in children with special educational needs and disabilities?  If any of these questions excite you, get in touch!

Main duties of the job

The post holder will work in collaboration with the Operational and Professional Head of School Nursing and the senior management team to:

• Deliver operationally efficient and effective services
• Co-ordination of the team to ensure continuity and the most effective use of resources 
• Collaborate with colleagues using a Quality Improvement approach to identify and implement change to drive quality and effective delivery of care
• Provide strong professional leadership
• Adopt corporate and clinical governance and best practice principles in service delivery
• Ensure effective performance management using audit and evaluation tools, monitoring, reporting mechanisms and other systems
• ensure high quality service to meet the needs of the local population with knowledge and understanding of community assets available to them
• Take the lead on service innovation and development to meet the needs of children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities 
• Lead on quality improvements to ensure the school nursing service is agile and able to adapt to the needs of families of children with special educational needs and disabilities.

The qualification, training & experience requirements for the role are underlined in the Job Description/Person Specification.

Working for our organisation

We have a skilled and dedicated workforce of over 5000 colleagues working in a diverse range of services over 55 sites and within people’s homes. We strive to enable a welcoming workplace culture that builds and celebrates civility, inclusivity and diversity, while providing a sense of belonging and trust.

Annual staff surveys, regular Pulse surveys and other engagement opportunities provide our people with lots of opportunity to tell us about their experiences of working with us.  In the latest staff survey, 61% of colleagues gave us their views.  It was great to hear that:

• 72% of colleagues would recommend the Trust as a place to work, ranking us 1st for Provider Trusts in the South West region on this question.
• 76% would recommend the standard of care provided in our services if a friend or relative needed treatment, also ranking us 1st in the South West region.
• 81% said that care of patients and service users is the Trust’s priority, compared with an average in comparable NHS Trusts in England of 64%.

 This high-level overview shows we are in a healthy position, with higher scores than average for comparable organisations, alongside a great response rate, indicating good staff engagement.  However, we also know we have plenty of room for improvement in many areas. To that end, we continue to prioritise and invest in our commitment to genuinely becoming a Great Place to Work with consistent top-quartile performance in the annual staff survey and Pulse surveys.