SEND Officer

The Opportunity

Salary: NJC Grade 8 £31,586 to £34,314 per annum

Contract Type: Permanent

Working Pattern: 37 hours per week, full time

Location: County Hall Chichester, with hybrid working

Closing date: 27 January 2025

Interview date: 07 February 2025

Are you looking for a new opportunity?

Do you have experience working with special educational needs?

Do you enjoy supporting children and their families?

This is an exciting time to join our Special Educational Needs Assessment Team (SENAT) as we are increasing our service to further support those with SEN.

As a SEND Officer within the SEN Assessment team, you will be involved with working closely with children and young people with complex SEN and their families, early years providers, schools, colleges, and external agencies providing advice and guidance.

Your key responsibility will be to ensure that statutory processes and timescales are followed. This includes good quality considerations, assessments, and reviews of the needs of learners with SEN and Disability, following the SEN Code of Practice.

You'll be the main point of contact in relation to a caseload of children, young people and young adults with SEN and Disability.

Responsibilities of this role include:

• Co-producing EHCPs with parents/young people and other professionals, ensuring that the desired outcomes are reflected using person centred approaches.
• Collating and summarising professional information and advice and the views and aspirations of the child or young person and their parents or carers into a statutory EHCP ensuring legal compliance in accordance with the SEND legislation.
• Drafting Education, Health and Care plans and specifying the
  educational, health and care provision necessary to meet those needs, and the resources required to do so.
• Ensuring EHCPs are clear, concise, and accessible to parents, children, young people, education providers and practitioners and completed to a high standard.
• Amending Education, Health, and Care plans following annual and other reviews.
• Working closely with parents and carers to support them through the EHC needs assessment and annual review processes to enable them to make informed and realistic decisions about special educational provision and placement.
• Consultation and negotiations with providers on securing an
  appropriate placement and ensure efficient use of resources.
• Managing a caseload of children/young people who have an EHCP and ensure their needs are appropriately met.

About You

We are looking for someone who is excellent at communicating and building positive relationships with a diverse range of customers, colleagues, and services.

You will need to have sensitivity to individual needs and use your judgement in complex situations.

If you enjoy working creatively and collaboratively you will thrive in this role.

For more information on the Key Skills, Qualifications and/or Experience required, please refer to the Job Description attached. Please refer to the Key Skills in your cover letter.

About Us

The Special Educational Needs Assessment Team (SENAT) manages the decisions and processes concerned with statutory education health and care needs assessment process for learners with an education, health, and care plan (EHCP), the placement of children in learning settings and the allocation of resources to settings.

The team considers suitability of and where appropriate arranges the assessment and placement of children, young people, and young adults with special educational needs in accordance with the provisions of the Children and Families Act 2014 (Pt 3, SEN) and associated regulations including the SEN Code of Practice to ensure that the statutory assessment procedures are followed and proposed EHCPs are issued and reviewed within the timescales laid down by the regulations.

This will be achieved through direct work with parents, educational settings, young people, health, Social Care and other external customers and partnership organisations to establish the best ways to support learning for children and Young People (0-25).

For more information about West Sussex County Council, please visit our WSCC About Us page.

Benefits

As an employer we recognise that it is our employees that are central to everything we do. We aim to create a supportive and dynamic working environment where employees can achieve their full potential, achieve a healthy work-life balance, and are rewarded for the work they do.

For a full list this can be found at our Rewards and Benefits page.

Upon joining us you will have access to a range of benefits including the following:

Further Information

The reference number for this role is CAFHE05540

For an informal conversation or for further information regarding the role, please contact Laura Murray (Team Manager - SENAT) at .

To apply, please follow the links below to upload your CV and Cover Letter.

In your cover letter please outline your motivations for applying and explaining the skills and experience you can bring to the role (please refer to the key skills) ensuring that any gaps in employment are covered in your CV. Please ensure you have saved the job description attached to the main advert on our website as, once the job has closed, you may not have the opportunity to download again.

We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people, and vulnerable adults.

This post is subject to three years referencing and an occupational health check.

Equity, inclusion, and accessibility is very important to West Sussex County Council. We welcome and encourage applications from everyone, as this helps us build a diverse and talented workforce, that reflects the communities we serve. We ensure our approach to recruitment is flexible and supportive to enable all applicants to be at their best and to ensure they have the best possible chance of success.

We operate a guaranteed interview scheme for applicants that have a disability, are a veteran or are a care leaver. More information can be found on our application help page.

Available documents

• SEND Officer Job Description.pdf