Specialist Advisor – Acute Services

Job summary

Specialist Advisor – Acute Services
Location: National
Daily rate: £300 (£268 day rate + £32/day holiday pay)
Ad-Hoc: As and when required
Closing Date: Tuesday 28th April 2026 at 11.59pm

Are you committed to helping us regulate health and social care within England?
When thinking about what drives you every day in your job, what keeps you motivated and passionate about your work, what comes to mind? For 3000+ people at the CQC we end each day knowing that we have made a difference to the lives of those most in need in our communities.

We make sure health and social care services provide people with safe, effective, compassionate, equitable, high-quality care and encourage services to improve.

We are looking for people who are caring, demonstrate integrity, aspire to excellence, committed to equitable and inclusive services and care and work well as part of a team to join with us and share in this sense of achievement. If you would like to help us make a positive impact to health and social care within England and deliver a service of excellence to the public then read on.

Why this could be a great role for you…
You will have an opportunity to contribute to ensuring that eating disorder services are safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led and that staff working in these services have the required skills, approach, infrastructure and outcomes to effectively treat people using these services.

You will gain valuable insight into how organisations are assessed and be exposed to varying degrees of examples of best practice and approaches to improve areas for development that might provide you with useful insights for your provider organisation.

You will support our inspectors to spot best practice and any concerns during the inspection process through your informed insight, knowledge and experience.
CQC has a strategic commitment to putting people’s experiences at the centre of care and to drive improvement. You will be supported in your work through our Advisory and Complimentary Workforce.

Job description

Are you committed to helping us regulate health and social care within England?
The CQC are looking for Senior Clinicians with experience of clinical management/governance process to work with us as Specialist Advisors and support our inspectors in their work through your informed insight, knowledge and experience of working within Acute Services.

We make sure health and social care services provide people with safe, effective, compassionate, equitable, high-quality care and encourage services to improve. We are looking for people who are caring, demonstrate integrity, aspire to excellence, committed to equitable and inclusive services and care and work well as part of a team to join with us and share in this sense of achievement.

If you would like to help us make a positive impact to health and social care within England and deliver a service of excellence to the public then read on.

Why this could be a great role for you…
You will have an opportunity to contribute to ensuring that acute services and the care provided to patients and families are safe, compassionate and effective and by clinicians with the required skills, approach, infrastructure and outcomes.

You will gain valuable insight into how acute services are assessed and be exposed to varying degrees of, and examples of best practice. You will have the opportunity to observe areas for development and those that will provide useful insights for you and your own service. You will also support our inspectors in their work through your informed insight, knowledge and experience.

The CQC has a strategic commitment to tackling inequalities. You will be supported in your work through our National Professional Advisor for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, Sola Afuape MBE as well as through the Advisory and Complimentary Workforce. The Workforce Equality Risk and Oversight Group also provides co-ordination and development of our approach to workforce EDI in our regulation.

What you will bring…
Expertise as a consultant, senior nurse, manager, matron, ACP or AHP specialising acute services. You will bring experience and understanding of what is necessary to ensure safe care is available to patients and staff. As part of your role you will assess the quality of care that is being delivered by staff equipped to provide safe, dignified and compassionate care.

Your experience will enable you to understand the opportunities, challenges, and statutory requirements of the service. You will seek insights from the experiences of both staff and people who use services and what is needed to ensure safe, good quality equitable care.

Because you will be operating as a senior professional, you will contribute to inspection teams inspiring confidence in provider organisations that the inspection team have the required level of seniority and expertise to undertake effective assessments of equity, equality, diversity and inclusion within our assessment framework.

Finally, most importantly you will bring an understanding of the diversity of lived experiences of both staff, people who use services and their families that should inform our understanding of the culture in which services and care are provided. This includes demonstrated awareness and understanding of intersectionality of oppressions.

For an informal discussion or further information about this role, please contact our Temporary Workforce Team on temprecruitment@cqc.org.uk.

Please note this role is subject to a satisfactory DBS check.

Person specification

Being a Specialist Advisor
This role can be undertaken as either a Casual Worker, paid directly to a personal bank account by the CQC for attending in your own time (non-working days, annual leave) or as a seconded position if your service is registered with the CQC and agrees to the secondment. Seconded SpAs' organisations agree in principle that their employees can attend CQC inspections and the seconded SpA seeks their line manager's permission to take leave to attend individual inspections, which can last from one to three days. The seconded SpA's organisation then invoices the CQC for the time the SpA spent away from their substantive role.

You will be offered opportunities to support inspection with 6 weeks’ notice whenever possible, however, you will also be contacted for more short notice support on occasions. You are under no obligation to accept an inspection should it be offered and it not be convenient for you. And, we are not able to guarantee you a set number of inspection opportunities in a one year period. You may be offered one a month or one in the whole year depending on the focus of the inspection programme.
If appointed, as a Specialist Advisor you will be expected to commit to at least 2 inspections per year.

If successful at interview we aim to conclude your pre-engagement checks within a 6-8 week window, please complete all forms and take actions to assist the team in achieving this. You will be provided with a dedicated onboarding peer who will support you in completing pre-engagement checks and will be on hand to answer any questions you have. You will be required to have a current DBS certificate under 3 years old and we require references going back three years. If you've been with the same employer for three years’ then we'll only require one reference.

Eligibility to work
If you are successful at interview, CQC will need to verify your right to work in the UK using digital identity verification. Details of how to complete the right to work check will be provided as part of the conditional offer of employment. If we are unable to verify your right to work digitally, we are required to complete this face to face at one of our CQC Offices. Please be aware that we are unable to progress any offer of employment until right to work in the UK is confirmed.

We will require all successful applicants to be active in Professional Practice.

To access the full Job Description, please visit the vacancy on our careers page.

Benefits

The Benefits
We offer a wide range of benefits, including:

• Training and development opportunities.
• Wellbeing initiatives, such as gym discounts and meditation.
• Discount schemes (including eligibility for a Blue Light card, at a cost of £4.99 and valid for 2 years), reward vouchers, car leasing and more!

Please see our benefits page for the full list.

Things you need to know

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

Selection process details

Individual Adjustments…
We are committed to being open and transparent around our processes and we endeavour to offer every candidate the opportunity to perform at their best throughout the recruitment process. We seek to support candidates to identify potential challenges and work with them to identify and facilitate individual adjustments as appropriate. Should you require assistance and/or would like to request an adjustment at any stage of the recruitment process, please contact a member of the team via email: temprecruitment@cqc.org.uk.

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Security

Successful candidates must undergo a criminal record check.People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Nationality requirements

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

• UK nationals
• nationals of the Republic of Ireland
• nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
• nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
• individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
• Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)

Working for the Civil Service

Please note this Post is NOT regulated by the Civil Service Commission.The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.

Diversity and Inclusion

The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see theCivil Service People Plan (opens in a new window) and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (opens in a new window).

Apply and further information

Once this job has closed, the job advert will no longer be available. You may want to save a copy for your records.

Contact point for applicants

Job contact :

• Name : Temporary Recruitment
• Email : temprecruitment@cqc.org.uk

Recruitment team

• Email : temprecruitment@cqc.org.uk