Southern Health seeks to fill five board level jobs

A chair and four non-executive directors are sought by Southern Health Foundation Trust, which has been dogged by care scandals and corporate governance problems in recent years.

Five non-executives resigned from the trust in March, and former chair Tim Smart left in September with Alan Yates taking over as interim. Mr Yates is due to step down in July.

The trust has also had an interim chief executive, Julie Dawes, director of nursing and quality, since Katrina Percy resigned last August.

The trust’s problems emerged after the death of Connor Sparrowhawk, who drowned in a bath while in its care in 2013.

In December 2015, a report by the audit firm Mazars highlighted failures at the £332.8m turnover trust to investigate and learn from patient deaths.

Last month the Care Quality Commission announced it would bring its first ever prosecution of an NHS trust over an alleged failure to provide safe care against Southern Health. The prosecution is in relation to an incident in December 2015 when a patient sustained serious injuries after falling from a roof at one of its hospitals.

The job description for the chair said the candidate “must ensure high standards of probity and governance and that the trust complies with its enforcement action, its constitution and statutory obligations at all times”.

The job will pay £45,000 a year, with the successful candidate expected to work two to three days a week.

The non-executive directors will be “responsible for providing appropriate oversight, governance and leadership to the trust in pursuit of its strategies to provide effective and high quality healthcare services”.

They will be expected to devote three to four days a month to the job, with pay ranging from £13,000 to £16,000 a year depending on responsibilities.

Applications for the chair close on 28 April and the other non-executives on 11 May.

The adverts were published on NHS Improvement’s website.