Vacancies

Public Health Officer – Healthy Early Years Coordinator

About the role

Are you passionate about giving every child the best start in life?

Are you looking to work in an area where you can make an impact improving health and wellbeing in early years settings across North Northamptonshire?

We are looking to recruit a Public Health Officer – Healthy Early Years Coordinator on a 12-month fixed term contract to join our friendly and forward-thinking Public Health team at North Northamptonshire Council. This is an exciting opportunity to play a central role in promoting the health and wellbeing of our youngest residents and their families.

Working within a dynamic, knowledgeable and supportive team, you will lead and coordinate key public health initiatives across the early years system helping to embed evidence-based practice, reduce health inequalities, and strengthen the foundations for lifelong health.

In this varied and rewarding role, you will:

Act as a key point of contact for early years settings, supporting them to deliver high-quality health promotion and improvement activities.
Lead the development and implementation of a Healthy Early Years Programme, working collaboratively with partners, settings, professionals, and families.
Strengthen engagement with early years providers, supporting them to embed health and wellbeing standards.
Coordinate and deliver training, campaigns, projects and resources that promote physical activity, mental wellbeing, nutrition and other areas of child health.
Analyse data, intelligence and feedback to improve services, inform planning and drive positive outcomes for children aged 0–5.
Help shape policy and practice by staying up to date with relevant evidence, guidance, legislation and national priorities.

This role offers a valuable opportunity to influence system wide improvements, build strong partnerships and directly contribute to healthier futures for children across North Northamptonshire.

This post is a fixed term appointment for a 12-month period.

The closing date for this post is Sunday 8th November 2026.

In-person interviews are currently expected to be held during the w/c 18th November 2026

If you have any further questions about this role, please contact Amy Fitzpatrick, Public Health Practitioner – Children and Young People at Amy.Fitzpatrick@northnorthants.gov.uk

What will you be doing?

Principal Responsibilities

Manage key pieces of public health development work, in line with local and national priorities and emerging legislation, to meet Public Health and Wellbeing Service Plans and national and local public health strategy.
Provide process redesign expertise to the Public Health team and be accountable for the planning, co-ordination, facilitation and monitoring of public health change or improvement projects; developing capability and capacity to embed service improvement tools and techniques supporting the continuous modernisation and redesign of traditional service.
Identify opportunities to improve and/or simplify directorate processes and seek to remedy these through improved processes, compliance or coaching.
Represent Public Health within Local Area Partnerships across North Northamptonshire
Contribute to project planning within specific public health priority areas, ensuring that a clear and transparent plan is maintained and managed using NNC project management methodology to track progress, in order to maintain control of delivering improved services using cost effective processes.
Support health improvement initiatives through engaging clinicians, commissioners and local authority providers in new initiatives to change behaviour, increasing public awareness of risk factors and health promotion.
Support health protection planning and the local public health response to
major incidents, disease outbreaks or other public health incidents.
Monitor changing guidance at a national and regional level, bring attention to the public health areas it will impact and tailor the public health programme according to the population need with the aim of reducing health inequalities.
To enhance the engagement and delivery of health promotion and health improvement projects related to children and young people (CYP) in the early years.
Communicate effectively, develop and maintain strong relationships, with both internal and external stakeholders, especially early years settings, to ensure the successful delivery of key CYP programmes.
Analysis of data and intelligence gathered through surveys and audits and production of summary reports which inform and target positive transformation for health and wellbeing of CYP.
To support the design and delivery of targeted CYP public health campaigns ensuring quality in the design and delivery and close working with internal and external communication teams and colleagues.
To manage an online presence via social media and relevant web pages.
Effective engagement with early years settings staff, CYP, parents and carers and services to capture their voice and co-produce services.
Act as a key point of contact for settings, contracted services and stakeholders to ensure the creation and seamless delivery of CYP public health programmes and interventions.
Oversight and responsibility for the organisation and delivery of training, presentations, development sessions and resources which contribute to education settings implementing health and wellbeing standards.
To keep up to date with changes in policies, standard practice, school curriculum and review and strengthen the programme where required.
Oversight and responsibility for the development and implementation of a Healthy Early Years Programme and other time-limited projects; guiding professionals in embedding evidence-based interventions, best practice and new innovative responses to need. Ensure multi agency groups and networks across settings and sectors are actively utilised in programme development and delivery.
Maintain a county-wide overview of the universal programmes available for early years children, by identifying examples of good practice, sharing and disseminating these practices and fostering supportive networks between education staff.
Engage directly with early years children, professionals and parents/carers, to deliver targeted support and guidance on physical activity, mental health, nutrition, and other relevant education. This work is informed by settings need or identified local and strategic priorities to ensure relevance and impact.

About you

Principal Responsibilities

Manage key pieces of public health development work, in line with local and national priorities and emerging legislation, to meet Public Health and Wellbeing Service Plans and national and local public health strategy.
Provide process redesign expertise to the Public Health team and be accountable for the planning, co-ordination, facilitation and monitoring of public health change or improvement projects; developing capability and capacity to embed service improvement tools and techniques supporting the continuous modernisation and redesign of traditional service.
Identify opportunities to improve and/or simplify directorate processes and seek to remedy these through improved processes, compliance or coaching.
Represent Public Health within Local Area Partnerships across North Northamptonshire
Contribute to project planning within specific public health priority areas, ensuring that a clear and transparent plan is maintained and managed using NNC project management methodology to track progress, in order to maintain control of delivering improved services using cost effective processes.
Support health improvement initiatives through engaging clinicians, commissioners and local authority providers in new initiatives to change behaviour, increasing public awareness of risk factors and health promotion.
Support health protection planning and the local public health response to
major incidents, disease outbreaks or other public health incidents.
Monitor changing guidance at a national and regional level, bring attention to the public health areas it will impact and tailor the public health programme according to the population need with the aim of reducing health inequalities.
To enhance the engagement and delivery of health promotion and health improvement projects related to children and young people (CYP) in the early years.
Communicate effectively, develop and maintain strong relationships, with both internal and external stakeholders, especially early years settings, to ensure the successful delivery of key CYP programmes.
Analysis of data and intelligence gathered through surveys and audits and production of summary reports which inform and target positive transformation for health and wellbeing of CYP.
To support the design and delivery of targeted CYP public health campaigns ensuring quality in the design and delivery and close working with internal and external communication teams and colleagues.
To manage an online presence via social media and relevant web pages.
Effective engagement with early years settings staff, CYP, parents and carers and services to capture their voice and co-produce services.
Act as a key point of contact for settings, contracted services and stakeholders to ensure the creation and seamless delivery of CYP public health programmes and interventions.
Oversight and responsibility for the organisation and delivery of training, presentations, development sessions and resources which contribute to education settings implementing health and wellbeing standards.
To keep up to date with changes in policies, standard practice, school curriculum and review and strengthen the programme where required.
Oversight and responsibility for the development and implementation of a Healthy Early Years Programme and other time-limited projects; guiding professionals in embedding evidence-based interventions, best practice and new innovative responses to need. Ensure multi agency groups and networks across settings and sectors are actively utilised in programme development and delivery.
Maintain a county-wide overview of the universal programmes available for early years children, by identifying examples of good practice, sharing and disseminating these practices and fostering supportive networks between education staff.
Engage directly with early years children, professionals and parents/carers, to deliver targeted support and guidance on physical activity, mental health, nutrition, and other relevant education. This work is informed by settings need or identified local and strategic priorities to ensure relevance and impact.

Our benefits

Here at North Northamptonshire Council, we’re transforming for the better, using all our creativity and imagination to create the best life for our local people.

You’ll find that we have a wide range of careers that may be more surprising than you think!

Why choose us?

We offer a vibrant working environment with:

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.
lots of 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
hybrid and flexible working arrangements, where practicable for service needs to help you with a healthy work-life balance.

We provide a range of great benefits such as an Employee Assistance Programme, an Employee Benefits Scheme, wellbeing support, travel rates at HMRC rates, as well as supporting a range of active Employee Network Groups.

About us

Our Values and Behaviours

Our values define who we are and how we operate, by forming the foundation for how we interact with our customers, colleagues and provide our services. They are also at the forefront of our decision making and delivery and are:

Customer-focused
Respectful
Efficient
Supportive
Trustworthy

Our key commitments help ensure that the priorities we make, now and in the future, maintain the necessary breadth of focus in those areas that we believe matter most.

Disability Confident Employer

We are proud to be a recognised Disability Confident Employer and is committed to providing an inclusive recruitment process and will offer an interview to disabled applicants who meet the essential criteria for the role.

Our Employment and Disability Service provides bespoke support to individuals facing barriers to employment, helping them work towards their goals to start, stay and succeed in employment. For further information please click here The Employment and Disability Service (EADS) | North Northamptonshire Council

Armed Forces Community

The council obtained the Gold status award for the Defence Employer Recognition Scheme (ERS).

Further information can be found at Jobs and careers | North Northamptonshire Council (northnorthants.gov.uk)

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