Commissioning Officer

**How you'll make a difference**:
As a Commissioning Officer (Cluster) you will contribute to improved delivery of early education, health and care services for children, young people and families with SEND (Special Educational Needs and Disabilities) in South Gloucestershire’s mainstream primary and secondary schools, through effective partnership and commissioning practice.

**What will you be doing?**
- You will work within our Children’s Commissioning Team, and in integration with our Special Educational Needs and Disability team and school clusters.
- It will be your responsibility to assess and understand the needs of children, young people and families with special educational needs and disabilities in our school.
- It is important that you work together with school leaders to plan, design and procure services which meet children, young people and families’ needs.
- In this role you will monitor and evaluate cluster commissioned services to ensure they are meeting planned outcomes for children and families.
- You will be working closely with a wide range of partners to contribute to our strategic aims for all children, young people and their families.

The priorities and work programme for this role will be set in partnership with the SEND Cluster leaders.

**What we need from you**:

- It is essential you have relevant knowledge (desirably, a degree) and experience of working in an organisation that commissions or provides education, social care or health services.
- We require you to have a strong commitment to improving the lives of children and families with special educational needs and disabilities.
- You must have excellent interpersonal skills to establish and maintain positive and effective relationships with a wide variety of partners.
- You will have a comprehensive skills set which includes analytical approaches for assessing needs, creative thinking for service design, and evaluation techniques for monitoring outcomes.
- You will have demonstrable experience of meeting service standards and deadlines, be well organised with excellent time management skills, and able to prioritise competing demands.

Please note that due to the nature of this role it is a requirement of employment that an enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check is obtained for this post.

**How a career at South Gloucestershire Council is different**:

- We know our team work best when they have balance in their lives and we offer genuine **flexibility **to help them achieve that **work/life balance**.
- We value our staff as individuals, investing in their careers and we are recognised for the quality, breadth and depth of our **training and development** offer, which helps make the greatest long-term difference in work.
- As part of our benefits package you will receive **generous annual leave** (pro rata), employee **wellbeing support** and you will have access to a range of **staff discounts**, including eye tests, travel, shopping and leisure activities

Our teams at South Gloucestershire Council are making a real difference to the lives of people who live, work and learn here.
- We’re providing essential services across our internal network to ensure we can fully support our community.
- We’re positive and forward thinking, always looking for new and innovative ways of working work and we’re ambitious about the future.

We've achieved a great deal, but we need talented and dedicated people to ensure we continue to make a difference.

**We’re making a difference, be part of it**

This is a limited limited term contract until 31st March 2027.

Salary is pro-rated to hours worked.