Practitioner Support Officer - Integrated Front Door

At Cheshire East we’re making significant, tangible investments in our foundations. This includes strengthening our commissioning function, expanding workforce development and creating clearer, more ambitious pathways. To realise these ambitions, we’re seeking ambitious and flexible individuals who want to help us shape the future.

We have an exciting opportunity for a Practitioner Support Officer – Integrated Front Door based at Delamere House, Crewe on a full time permanent basis.

This is an exciting opportunity to work in partnership with colleagues in the “Integrated Front Door” to provide advice, guidance and practical support relating to Early Help Assessment (EHA) and Lead Professional (LP) processes to practitioners in Cheshire East Council and other agencies. To provide advice, information and guidance to children and young people and their families relating to Early Help Support, Assessments and Lead Professional processes.

• Raise awareness of ChECS and Early Help Brokerage and EHA processes with practitioners and managers across relevant agencies by giving advice and support including organising and delivering training and other activities such as single and multi‑agency briefings, EHA training and working lunches, to improve outcomes for children and young people.
• Provide telephone and some hands‑on guidance and advice to practitioners and managers from Cheshire East Council and partner agencies (such as schools, health services and voluntary community and faith sector organisations) who need support with EHA and Lead Professional processes, to ensure they are able to assess the needs of children and young people holistically and at an early stage.
• Complete home visits with families to triage and assess the needs of the families to determine the support offered through Early Help Services.
• Provide individual support in the form of guidance, coaching and mentoring to practitioners and managers in Cheshire East and partner agencies to enable them to devise, implement and review multi‑agency action plans for children and young people which meet their assessed needs.
• Provide parents, carers and young people with advice and guidance in relation to EHA, primarily over the telephone and model positive ways of engaging them in assessment, action planning and reviewing processes to enable practitioners and managers from Cheshire East and partner agencies to involve families fully in EHA processes.
• Design and develop publications such as briefings, newsletters and leaflets to ensure managers and practitioners across relevant agencies receive up to date information and guidance around EHA and Lead Professional processes.
• Collect, record and report relevant quantitative and qualitative data to ensure performance management systems facilitate a needs‑led approach. Coach practitioners across agencies in the use of data tools to enable them to measure progress and improvements in outcomes for children and young people.
• Contribute to the development of an electronic EHA system and deliver training to practitioners and managers in Cheshire East on using the system.
• Evaluate the provision of services and contribute to the policy development and planning processes within the Integrated Front Door.

• NVQ Level 3, or equivalent qualification/experience, in a relevant discipline
• Experience of providing practitioners with advice, guidance and support to enable them to deliver quality services
• Experience of multi‑agency partnership working
• Experience of using a holistic assessment framework to assess children and young people’s needs and develop individual package of support
• Experience working in an organisation which delivers…