About the role
The vision for Children's Services is 'We will be our best, so every child can be their best' and we are committed to ensuring the voice of the children and young people we support can be heard within the shaping of service delivery.
This exciting new role is a commitment to embedding meaningful engagement in the services we provide.
The Engagement and Participation Manager will play a key role in ensuring the Children’s Engagement & Participation Programme meets objectives by increasing service user and multi-agency engagement and involvement, ensuring the ‘voice’ of the children and young people to shape the delivery of services across North Northamptonshire. The role will focus on development and implementation of service improvement via active and meaningful participation of children and young people.
The primary responsibility will be developing a co-production model which will engage and promote children and young people, with a particular focus on young people whose ‘voices are hard for professionals to hear’ and those who experience barriers to engagement. Acting as a coach for senior leaders and executives in helping them fulfil the role of co-production sponsor. The Engagement & Participation Manager will also provide direct support and coaching to all levels of managers and supervisors ensuring the maximisation of service user engagement to inform service delivery.
You will be responsible for evaluating the implementation and impact of co-produced training and resources and support programmes such as, Family Hubs, Early Help and SEND in integrating the ‘voice’ of children and young people within activities and plans to ensure our families are central to decision making, by integrating engagement & participation management activities into their project plans.
The role will manage relationships and resolve engagement problems within projects and programmes to ensure efficient delivery of outcomes and benefits and to seek solutions to improve service delivery
Managing a small team the Engagement and Participation Manager will have oversight of Children’s Services Engagement, the Local Offer, Family Information Service, Family Hubs and support across SEND and Early Years teams.
What will you be doing?
The role's key responsibilities will be;
- Apply a structured co-production methodology and lead engagement & participation management activities, applying an engagement management process and tools to create a strategy and support adoption of the improvements required by the projects and/or initiatives.
- Reach out, engage and support young people to influence the world around them in creative and relevant ways – through social media, youth spaces, local and national forums, fun and life enhancing projects.
- Identify and manage anticipated resistance, consult and coach teams to ensure there is an integrated approach to Children and Young people engagement & participation with a clear understanding of what’s required to co-produce and co-deliver services which improve the lives of children, young people and families in North Northamptonshire.
- To identify gaps and opportunities in provision, and where necessary, lead multi-agency work to develop, plan and implement solutions and improvements, taking account of national policy, current research and identified good practice.
- To coordinate, encourage, develop and support joined up communications between partner agencies on public awareness and in support of programmes and strategies relating to Children & Young people.
(Please refer to the Job Description for more information)
About you
The right candidate for this role will be passionate about improving services for Children, Young People and Families of North Northamptonshire. You will be a self-starter who is curious and inquisitive, with exceptional communication skills, both written and verbal, with excellent active listening skills.
You will be confident in implementing engagement management principles, methodologies and tools with the aim of ensuring the 'voice' of children and young people is 'heard' in all that we do. You will be able to demonstrate solid experience working with children from a wide range of ethnic and religious backgrounds, care and youth justice experience, special educational needs and disabilities and supporting them to take part in Local Authority governance and influence decision making.
You will be familiar with Project Models with project management approaches, tools and phases of the project lifecycle with experience of large-scale organisational change
Ability to clearly articulate messages to a variety of audiences and the ability to establish and maintain strong relationships across multiple stakeholders.
Establishing and managing change principles will be at the core of what you do, using innovative and creative ways to support cultural shift across the partnership system.
Our benefits
We offer:
- a competitive salary
- a pension scheme, where we pay a significant contribution on top of your contribution. It provides life cover and ill-health protection.
- opportunities to develop your skills, knowledge and potential in a large unitary council
- generous leave entitlement (28 days, rising to 33 days) and bank holidays, plus the option to buy up to an extra 10 days
- agile and flexible working arrangements to help you with a healthy work-life balance.
About us
We are a new unitary council, established in April 2021; we are one of the largest unitary councils in the country. Our vision for North Northants is to be 'A place where everyone has the best opportunities and quality of life'.
Our priorities are:
- helping people live active fulfilled lives
- caring for our young people, providing them with high quality education and opportunities
- enabling a thriving and successful economy
- leading on a green and sustainable environment
- ensuring our communities are connected so they can shape their lives and where they live
- providing modern public services
Our values, as chosen by our staff, are - Customer-focused, Respectful, Efficient, Supportive and Trustworthy.
Your differences make us different - Achieve Together.
We are undertaking consultation with the Trade Unions on terms and conditions and the future NNC pay structure and during this time are appointing new employees on interim spot salaries. You will be advised of the outcome and any impact on your role once this work is complete.
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