Specialist Project Officer, Professional Standards & Audit Service
Permanent, Full Time
£35,910 to £42,247 per annum
Location: Chelmsford
Working Style: Fixed-base worker
Closing Date: 13th April 2025
Children and Families is recognised as a service in which social work can develop and prosper, with a culture of collaboration, integrity and compassion; promoting the development and wellbeing of children, young people and their families; protecting them from neglect and abuse. Working together with partners delivering a range of early help, family support and effective social work interventions which build resilience, remove barriers and enable children and young people to look forward to a brighter future.
The Opportunity
The Specialist Project Officer is part of the Professional Standards and Audits Service (PSAS). The role is responsible for co-ordinating and maintaining the delivery of a busy audit and inspection portfolio to a consistently excellent standard, which requires being highly organised to co-ordinate and aggregate large amounts of data, develop dashboards, and produce reports efficiently to meet deadlines, and confident presentation skills. With a sound understanding of Childrens Services, the postholder represents the function, building credible, influential relationships with senior leaders both internally and externally. As the lead for inspection activity for Children’s Social Care sits within the service, you will directly support the Lead for Inspection preparation activity.
The Specialist Project Officer needs to be confident and skilled in engaging and communicating with all staff and managers in Children’s and Family Services at all levels, and the complex and large multi-agency group. The role requires high emotional intelligence and political awareness. The politically sensitive nature of the material gathered, analysed and shared needs to be managed with high awareness of risk and impact.
The Experience You Will Bring
- Educated to degree level or equivalent by experience with evidence of continuing professional development and expert knowledge in relevant professional area.
- Experience of successfully providing project delivery or programme support.
- Desirable operational knowledge and experience within children and families’ services and/ or across partner agencies and stakeholders
- An understanding of the role of Quality Assurance and the use of data to deliver outcomes within this area of work.
- Political awareness & sensitivity to the role of Children & Families in delivering impactful services to Children & Families
- An understanding of the role that Quality Assurance holds within a complex organisation with statutory duties.
- Strong data management, analysis skills, building and maintaining trackers and dashboards.
- Advanced working knowledge of IT programmes such as Power BI and Excel with strong report writing and organisational skills.
- Aptitude for designing visual maps and bulletins with an understanding of the design and digital platforms.
- Effective communicator able to build good relationships with a range of colleagues and stakeholders; assertive in communications with the ability to persuade, influence and negotiate effectively.
- Uses initiative and judgement and decision-making skills in providing quality assurance to the work undertaken for customers.
- Proven ability to work flexibly, be proactive and adapt to changing circumstances.
- Works well under pressure with a high level of emotional resilience, able to work and respond at pace.
To read more about our business area, please visit: Children & Families
Please take a look at our ‘No Magic’ Children & Families video
Essex County Council is proud to be a Disability Confident Leader. We’re committed to interview all disabled applicants who choose to apply under our Job Interview Scheme if they meet the minimum requirements of the job. Please speak to our Recruiters if you require any reasonable adjustments during the process.
We’re also committed to interview all veterans and care leavers, who meet the minimum requirements of the role for which they are applying.
At Essex County Council, we value integrity and ethical behaviour. We kindly ask that you embrace our code of conduct and the Nolan principles , including throughout the recruitment process. Your commitment to these standards helps us maintain a positive and respectful workplace for everyone.
The role requires you to be mobile throughout a wider operational area including travelling around the county of Essex and beyond, transporting service users and their belongings and to be able to do so in an emergency. Driving licence and car or the ability to meet the mobility requirements of the role through other means is essential.
As part of employment with Essex County Council (ECC) should your role require a DBS check you will be required to register with the DBS update service. The DBS update service ensures all registered DBS certificates are kept up to date and allows authorised parties to view the status of your certificate. This is an annual subscription, and you will be responsible for ensuring this is maintained. For further information on the DBS update service please go to https://www.gov.uk/dbs-update-service
Essex County Council is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and vulnerable adults and expects all employees and volunteers to share this commitment.
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If you have queries on this role or require anything further, please email resourcing.team@essex.gov.uk
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