Managing Director of Adult Services - National Autistic Society

The National Autistic Society is the UK’s leading charity for autistic people. Since 1962, we’ve been transforming lives, changing attitudes and helping to create a society that works for autistic adults and children.

We transform lives by providing support, guidance and practical advice for the 700,000 autistic adults and children in the UK, as well as their three million family members and carers. Autistic people turn to us at key moments or challenging times in their lives, be it getting a diagnosis, going to school or finding work. Our Adult Services directorate provides a mixture of person centred residential and day services, as well as supported living, often for people with complex needs.

We are and should be very proud of the positive impact we are having on the people we support, their families, their friends and their communities.  However, in 2022/23 Adult Services made a significant and unsustainable operating loss and a turnaround plan was initiated. We are looking to appoint a new Managing Director of Adult Services to continue to drive the changes needed to ensure a financially viable, quality driven provision for the people we support. You will focus on the business turnaround, continually assessing the viability of our services. You will provide strong leadership to ensure that your teams evolve and innovate, making sure that they have a clear understanding of and passion for person centred support.

You will bring experience of leadership in a large complex social care provider. You will enjoy transforming services and will be excited by the challenge of continuing with our change programme. Your knowledge of what a high quality service looks like will be essential, as will your focus on creating and developing an operation which is sustainable and modern.

We are passionate about supporting autistic people into work, and particularly welcome applications from autistic people. We help autistic people from all backgrounds and strive to represent the same diversity in our staff and volunteers. We particularly encourage applications from people from all minority groups, who are currently under-represented in our workforce. Together, we can create a society that works for autistic people.  

For more information on this exciting opportunity, please click here, or for an informal, confidential discussion with our recruitment partners at VBS, please call Rob Hilyer on 07952 316 654, or by email at NAS@vbsearch.co.uk.