Commissioning Officer

Job description

Job responsibilities

We have an exciting opportunity to join the Childrens Commissioning Team, for a fixed term/ secondment contract, for one year, as a Commissioning Officer, supporting the commissioning of services for children in care.

This is a varied role with a focus on effective contract management and quality assurance of Residential Childrens Homes to improve outcomes for the children and young people and ensure value for money for the Council.

For more information or to chat about this opportunity please contact Chris Howard chris.howard@cambridgeshire.gov.uk

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

Take a look at our Employment Benefits Brochure attached to this advert to find out more.

You will support the work of the childrens commissioning team taking the lead for the contract management and quality assurance of Childrens Residential Homes.

Your key responsibilities will include:

• Quality assurance of services to improve outcomes of children in care. This will include regular travel across the County and a requirement to travel nationally.
• Contract management, fee negotiation and identifying efficiencies to achieve value for money for the Council.
• Contributing to the commissioning of new services, including evaluating applications to provide services to the Council and ensuring accurate contract documents are implemented in a timely way.
• Developing effective relationships with providers including leading meetings and contributing to provider meetings, forums and market engagement events.
• Supporting social care colleagues and other professionals ensure that children in care are receiving services in line with their assessed needs.

You will have a passion for improving outcomes for children and young people, ideally with some experience of commissioning services in social care or education and some knowledge of the commissioning cycle. You will have a good understanding of what good quality care consists of within a residential care setting and a sound understanding of safeguarding children and ideally previous exposure to multi-agency working.

You will have previous experience of managing contracts including the ability to identify efficiencies and achieve savings.

You will be an excellent communicator with good interpersonal skills and IT skills, be particularly skilled in report writing and be able to work on your own initiative, confident managing your time and setting your own priorities.

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 dont meet every single requirement in the job role but think this could be you, please dont 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

Person Specification

General Requirements

Essential

• Please refer to job description above

Desirable

• Please refer to job description above

Disclosure and Barring Service Check

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.

Employer details

Employer name

Cambridgeshire County Council

Address

Huntingdon

PE28 4YE

Employer's website

https://www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk/ (Opens in a new tab)