Senior Placement and Commissioning Officer
| Posting date: | 24 June 2025 |
|---|---|
| Salary: | £38,626 to £41,511 per year |
| Hours: | Full time |
| Closing date: | 08 July 2025 |
| Location: | Worthing, West Sussex, BN12 4SE |
| Company: | West Sussex County Council |
| Job type: | Permanent |
| Job reference: | CAFHE05831_1750792171 |
Summary
The Opportunity
Salary: NJC Grade 10 £38,626 to £41,511 per annum
Contract Type: Permanent
Working Pattern: 37 hours per week, full time
Location: Countywide
Do you have experience in brokerage and contract management?
Do you enjoy coaching, mentoring, and motivating others?
Are you passionate about supporting children and young people?
You will be based in our Commissioning Team as a Senior Placement and Commissioning Officer, delivering a customer focused service. You will contribute to the Directorates objectives of securing best value support services through the effective management of identifying placement options for the children and young people we care for.
The Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) Commissioning Team, sits within the wider Children, Young People and Learning Commissioning Team. It is a small, but growing team, that works across health, education and social care and are focussed on creating positive outcomes for Children, Young People and Families, and we have the optimism and enthusiasm to achieve this. You will deliver a customer focused and efficient service, contributing to the Directorate objectives of securing best value support services through the effective management.
This role will work across all areas, supporting with contract related work and striving to ensure consistency across the teams. We have a number of exciting projects and this role will also support this work and so you will have a varied and exciting workload.
Effective communication is key to developing good working relationships with providers, key stakeholders, and colleagues to provide specialist advice and information. You will use your analytical skills to interpret, manipulate and evidence varied and complex data information relating to services and suppliers, whilst having excellent communication skills to be able to negotiate effectively and have the confidence to challenge others.
Experience and Skills
Key Skills:
- Ability to present information clearly, and in ways that promote understanding. Including the ability to persuade and successfully convince others of the need to take a specific course of action.
- Good analytical skills to interpret complex tender/financial information, with the ability to organise, plan and meet set targets
- Good communication and negotiation skills to work with partners including the ability to negotiate solutions across wide areas of the business to achieve best outcomes and value for money.
- Solution focussed with the ability to analyse complex situations and provide forward thinking strategies and solutions that consider a variety of possible solutions and balance risks/resources and desired outcomes
- Ability to work flexibly as required across different areas within the Children's Services Commissioning Team, embrace change and have the flexibility to respond to the needs of the service.
About Us
At West Sussex County Council, we are ambitious for our children and our workforce. We are committed to improving our services for the children and families in West Sussex that we support and care for.
Children, Young People & Learning are focused on delivering a significant shift to prevention of needing to bring children into care where it is safe not to. Closer working with partners, and a focused commissioning strategy will achieve better outcomes for our children and young people.
Rewards and 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 CAFHE05831.
For an informal conversation or for further information regarding the role, please contact Charlotte Smith 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.