Early Support Adviser

Applications are invited for this exciting development opportunity for an experienced professional to apply for a 8-month secondment or temporary position within Early Years SEND team., The Early Years SEND team promotes high quality inclusive practice across the Early Year's sector. The team supports childcare providers in Cambridgeshire to work with children with Special Educational Needs or Disabilities, alongside managing the Early Support pathway. This is a multi-disciplinary approach to meeting the individual needs of children who have a disability or significant and complex additional needs. This is an exciting opportunity to be part of a small friendly team. Your role would be to liaise regularly with families and relevant professionals to provide advice and support to professionals when making a referral to Early Support to achieve the best possible outcomes for both children and families in Cambridgeshire. This may include visiting settings to enable a full understanding of the reasonable adjustments being made to support the child. You will also support families and professionals where a child is not accepted onto the Pathway by helping them to identify possible next steps for the child and/or family. You will also provide high quality advice and support around individual children who are on the Early Support Pathway and monitor, track and evaluate the Early Support journey for individual children and their families.

The successful candidate will have significant experience, skills and a passion for working with children and their families in the early years with SEND. You will understand the Early Years Statutory framework and how the SEND Code of Practice relates to early years. You will have excellent interpersonal skills combined with the ability to represent the Service in a positive and professional manner, including communicating with a wide range of internal and external customers. You must have strong problem-solving skills and the ability to take a hands-on role and work independently. You will ideally have good working knowledge of Windows & Microsoft packages (although training can be provided).

The work base is Sunley House, Papworth Everard with some hybrid working at home or from other council offices as we encourage flexible ways of working with a real focus on wellbeing., Cambridgeshire is a great place to work and live with a diverse population, an urban centre in Cambridge, historic Isle of Ely, Huntingdon and St Ives as well as more rural landscapes. Our four values are central to our culture, driving everything we do. We are proud to serve the diverse communities of Cambridgeshire and want our workforce to be reflective of this diversity, which we firmly believe benefits our colleagues, the organisation and our communities. If you don't meet every single requirement in the job role but think this could be you, please don't be put off. We are committed to building a workplace that is compassionate and inclusive as well as diverse, so if you think you could be a good candidate for this role please consider applying and speak to the recruiting manager if you have any questions. Our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy, along with our employee network 'IDEAL' and self-organised peer support groups help us to foster an inclusive, supportive and safe working environment where people feel valued, respected, and empowered. We collect relevant diversity data for monitoring as part of the recruitment process to understand the diversity of our applicants and monitor any trends throughout the recruitment processes so that we can take meaningful action. We are proud to be a Disability Confident Employer. We fully support providing reasonable adjustments throughout our recruitment process, as well as when you join us, and we encourage candidates to contact the Hiring Manager, whose details can be found in the advert, to discuss any adjustment needs. Some examples of adjustments could include additional time to complete an assessment or printing a document on pastel coloured paper with larger font size and line spacing. We would value talking about what might be possible to enable you to join us and thrive, so if there is something that would help you to do your best during your journey with us, please get in touch. Visit our jobs and careers section to find out more about our wide range of learning and development opportunities; apprenticeships; our wellbeing package; staff benefits; our commitment to equality, diversity and Inclusion. https://www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk/council/jobs-and-careers

We value our colleagues in Cambridgeshire County Council and have developed a number of benefits in addition to the basics like annual leave, sick pay, pension and mileage…

• A comprehensive wellbeing package to cover all aspects of wellbeing, both in and out of work, which can also be accessed by your family
• Buy up to 4 weeks additional annual leave (pro-rata) through our salary sacrifice scheme
• Take your bank holidays flexibly to better suit your personal circumstances
• Make Additional Voluntary Contributions (Shared AVCs) to your pension with tax and National Insurance savings
• Access to development opportunities, apprenticeships and qualified coaches to support your personal and professional growth
• Paid volunteering hours each year so you can make a positive impact on our community during your normal working day
• Access to Peer Support Groups through our IDEAL staff equality, diversity and inclusion network
• Opportunities to nominate and receive Employee Recognition Awards
• An Our Cambs Rewards account, giving you access to in-store and online discounts as well as our Car Lease and Cycle to Work schemes