Contract Officer

About the role
Are you an ambitious and inspirational individual with the capability to make a difference to people’s lives?

Then we want to hear from you

Cambridgeshire County Council is looking for a Contract Officer to support our Contracts Team. This is a unique opportunity to be part of an established high performing team with an outstanding reputation for leading the way in our Adult’s Commissioning Directorate.

Can you rise to the challenge? If you have the passion for putting social care at the heart of everything you do and the ambition to help shape our future, we would love to hear from you.

What will you be doing?
Work with Contract and Account Managers to develop and use appropriate systems and tools (such as the risk matrix tool) to manage and monitor contractual compliance with internal and external providers in order to ensure that quality services are provided to service users

Identify contractual compliance shortfalls and liaise Commissioners and Contract and Account Managers to recommend the appropriate course of action. To professionally challenge poor practice and carry out ongoing work with providers to address any such shortfalls and ensure improvement of service provision and quality and the management and mitigation of risk.

Where appropriate, to gather information or carry out an initial visit to a provision which has not previously been used or monitored where a Service User is being placed for the first time.

Monitor notifications of concerns and report evidence of any trends in performance, concerns and other issues to the relevant Contract and Account Manager and support key Managers, Commissioner, CQC, Quality Improvement, Operations and Safeguarding Teams in the event of provider failure.

Ensure providers are aware of and comply with all relevant legislation and contract requirements as well as current priorities and strategies across both Councils.

About you
Be educated to A Level / NVQ Level 3, GCSE Maths and English Grade C

Have an up to date and credible level of knowledge and understanding relating to commissioning and contract management.

Have knowledge of policy, legislation and guidance relating to Commissioning and Contract Management.

Have the ability to problem solve on a wide range of issues and to seek the necessary information and guidance to make an appropriate decision or recommended course of action

Have good analytical skills and the ability to draw qualitative and quantitative data from a wide range of sources and utilise it to inform strategy development.

Have experience of using information management systems to produce good quality data in a variety of formats.

Have extensive office administrative experience and be fully proficient at using IT systems, with a good working knowledge of the Microsoft Office package

Have knowledge of Health and Safety Legislation.

Have knowledge of Data Protection and Equal Opportunities legislation and their requirements

Have an understanding of financial management, procedures, and processes

Be able to prioritise workload

Be able to consistently produce work of a high standard

Be able to work on own initiative with mínimal supervision

Have commitment to continuous service development

Be adaptable and flexible to the needs of the Team with a willingness to learn and develop.

About us
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.

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.

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.

Our benefits
We value our colleagues in Cambridgeshire County Council and have developed a number of benefits:

- Flexible working
- Flexible Bank Holidays
- A comprehensive wellbeing package
- Our Cambs Rewards employee discounts
- A comprehensive pension scheme.
- IDEAL staff equality, diversity and inclusion network.
- Camweb our staff intranet helping to keep you informed
- An employee recognition scheme