Current jobs related to Service Manager - Chichester, West Sussex - West Sussex County Council

The Opportunity

Salary: £64,682 to £68,330 per annum

Contract Type: 2 permanent posts

Working Pattern: 37 hours per week, full time, Monday to Friday

Location: County Hall, Chichester, with hybrid working

Closing date: 27 October 2025

Interview date: 07 November 2025

Are you a strong leader, either currently working as a Service Manager or able to demonstrate equivalent experience?

Are you a forward thinker, striving to deliver change and continually improve practice?

Do you have comprehensive knowledge and experience in SEND, with a commitment to sustain the highest levels of care for children, young people, and their families through partnership working?

This is an exciting opportunity for two inspirational leaders to join our Special Educational Needs Assessment Team (SENAT) as Service Managers.

As one of two senior managers of the service area, you will lead the co-ordination of Special Educational Needs Assessment and Reviewing within the SEND and Inclusion service.

You will manage a group of SENAT Team Managers, and all staff within specifically focused teams. You will work in partnership with other Services across the Education and Skills Directorate and the wider Children's Services department, as well as key external partners, building on our commitment to working in co-production with a person-centred approach.

This role requires you to skilfully negotiate to create solutions, by persuading and influencing a wide range of people to achieve the best outcomes for children with EHCPs (Education, Health, and Care Plans). By providing professional leadership, you will ensure effective practices in all areas of the statutory SEND work.

This is an amazing time to join WSCC as a Service Manager, where you can help develop the shape of our future service, the provisions and budgets, through recommending changes to processes and practices, and collaboratively planning and developing the service in line with the forthcoming DfE White Paper.

Key responsibilities of the role include:

• Managing a large-scale area of activity within SEND and Inclusion service area.
• Providing expert advice and guidance on complex issues.
• Analysing and evaluating data, identifying solutions, and developing practice.
• Contributing to the successful implementation of the SEND Strategy.
• Managing the budget held by the service (circa £80m), plus advisory impact on projects relating to the role's specialism and the High Needs Budget. The expenditure of this budget directly impacts on the wider county council resources, including those of schools.
• Formulating new policies and processes, which consider the views of stakeholders (within WSCC and other Partner Organisations, such as Health and schools, and Parent/Carers).

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

About You

To succeed in this role, you will need significant expertise in the strategic and operational oversight of the provision of statutory Services. You will have a thorough understanding of SEND legislation and provision, and proven experience of successful service management and improvement.

Please note, you will need emotional resilience in this role as it is an emotive service area, where external customers can be unhappy with outcomes. You will be responsible for safeguarding the entire service, all of whom could be subject to unpleasant and sometimes abusive behaviour.

You will need to:

• Operate from a position of assured authority.
• Respond to complex data and information swiftly.
• Demonstrate confidence in managing a large team, providing direction and support, and
• inspiring and engaging individuals and teams.
• Challenge, influence, and negotiate with partners, ensuring a joint approach to meeting children's and young people's needs.

If you have a passion for creating better outcomes for children through raising standards of practice and delivering innovative solutions, we would love to hear from you.

Please refer to the key skills in your cover letter as these will be used for shortlisting criteria.

Key Skills:

• Ability to deliver change and continually improve practice and preferencing in a supportive, positive way. Emotionally intelligent and able to apply effective leadership, people management and performance management skills with the ability to provide direction, leadership and support to individuals and teams. Ability to manage self and others; be self-aware and understand the impact of work on self and others; respond constructively to situations and workload, appropriately keeping cases on target and balancing competing demands. Ability to set timescales and objectives and review effectiveness of service delivery.

• Ability to make sound pragmatic problem-solving decisions, which will have a wider service impact. The ability to analyse and make judgements to tackle difficult problems of a technical, professional, resource or people related nature, including highly developed risk management skills and practices to complex issues.

• Sound partnership working skills including the successful co-ordination of partners to delivery objectives.

• Ability to challenge existing practices and models of service delivery and identify innovative solutions that are outcome focused and co-constructed. Ability to effectively apply solution focused leadership. Take systems analysis approach and use systemic leadership techniques.

• Effective research, evaluation, and interpretation skills to derive conclusions and plan over the short term to medium term. Ability to set timescales and objectives and review effectiveness of service delivery. The post holder will take into account changes in legislation and national policy. They will identify and influence practice improvements to meet the needs of the communities they are serving.

• Excellent communication skills with the ability to influence the actions of others and communicate information which may be complex or contentious. Includes the ability to negotiate solutions across wide areas of business and successfully convince others of the need to take a specific course of action.

• Effective people management and performance management skills with the ability to lead and inspire, providing direction and support to individuals and teams.

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 years).

For further information and to find out about the different roles in the SEN Assessment Team, please visit the West Sussex County Council website West Sussex SEN Assessment Team (SENAT).

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:

Employer Pension Contribution: 18.70% (this alters per annum on the 1 April each year).

Annual leave: 30 days holiday + Bank Holidays = 38 days

How to Apply

The reference number for this role is CAFHE05999.

For an informal conversation or for further information regarding the role, please contact Andy Parker, Head of Service, 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 helppage.

LOCATION

Chichester area

CONTRACT TYPE

Permanent

JOB TYPE

Education & Skills

CLOSING DATE

27 October 2025