Job Description and Person Specification:Senior Locality Officer

Job Title:Senior LocalityOfficerx2

Salary:£24,500 (pro rata)

Hours: 18 hours per week

Contract: Permanent

Location: Tamworth / Stafford

Line Manager: Operations Manager (South / North)

Line Management of:Social Action Officer and one other in each Locality

Budget/Income: allocated discretionary spending only

Job Overview: The post holdersare responsible for the overall offer to local communities in their locality in relation to the Staffordshire County Council Strategic Partner role which Support Staffordshire and SSCVA undertakes in conjunction with SCVYS. They will also line manage one or two local staff members and take local responsibility for Support Staffordshire Offices.

Key Responsibilities:

  1. Ensuring services are consistent with our stated values.
  2. Ensuring where appropriate, that volunteers are involved in delivering our services.
  1. Ensuring effective cross-organisation working in order to meet our aims and objectives.
  1. Ensure efficient and proportionate monitoring, evaluation and impact assessment of services; and supporting high customer service quality and quality assurance as necessary.
  1. Undertake research and review relevant community based approaches from elsewhere in UK to inform local opportunities and options. Also to review and make proposals for greater efficiency, collaboration or improved delivery in agreed specific SCC service areas (eg. voluntary car schemes).
  1. Advise SCC in the development and implementation of any tendering/procurement and co-production process related to SCC services. Support VCSEs or startups with engaging in any such tendering/procurement, coproduction or other SCC processes with the aim of shifting service delivery from being SCC-led to community-led; with minimal disruption and maximum continuity for the public/service users.
  1. Encourage and support VCSE organisations to become members, and encourage and support them to complete a member Data Capture Return; and for this to be used for our VCSE Directory and shared with partners as agreed.
  1. Ensure delivery of IAG support to local VCSE organisations, in particular Support Staffordshire/SSCVA members. Delivery is expected to be free or subsidised in proportion to local investments of funders (according to their parameters where stated) or offered as a paid for service. To this end the post holder will deliver a range of IAG support through high quality diagnostics and follow up surgeries, email/telephone support, training & workshops, peer-support networks and templates/documentation.
  1. Take a lead on one or more subject area for the wider Localities team, keeping up to date on good practice and cascading understanding. Subjects may include start-up support, legal structure and governance, business planning, policies & procedures, quality standards, commissioning/tendering and wider funding advice and volunteer management.
  1. To support SCC employees through workforce development focussed upon involving volunteers, community engagement and consultation or similar community based approaches; through workshops, training, shadowing/buddy schemes or similar.
  1. Organising and facilitating Locality Forums on a regular basis; to support the widest engagement and networking of the local VCSE sector, likely to be 2-4 times per annum. Bringing together local member organisations to discuss and problem-solve local public policy issues, service changes and organisational development support needs. To this extent to maintain local operational relationships with statutory sector partners.Also to support the development of service delivery peer-support networks (eg. libraries) amongst community providers to ensure community provision continues to benefit from peer-peer support and professional collaboration across Staffordshire.
  1. Support and develop local community navigation/connector pilots and seek to integrate with similar cross-organisation working such as Lets Work Together; and secure the sustainable embedding into mainstream services where successful. Also to support the integration of VCSE organisations into Multi-specialist Care Teams led by the local NHS/GPs. Also to support VCSEs to engage with social prescribing or similar models developed with the local Health and Care providers.
  1. Line manages local staff as agreed.
  1. Take a lead on managing the local office of Support Staffordshire.
  1. To undertake any other duties as determined by the line manager.

Person Specification: Senior Locality Officer

  1. Able to demonstrate the Core Competencies required of all staff
  1. Positive work ethic, dependable and conscientious
  2. Flexibility, initiative and good time management
  3. Collaborative approach to success
  4. Organisation and administration skills for the role, including IT skills
  5. Working within agreed business plans, policies, procedures and systems
  6. Working within the reasonable direction of your line manager
  7. Beneficiary and customer focused
  8. Applies equality of opportunity
  9. Communicating appropriately
  10. Proactive in personal development
  1. Able to demonstrate the Core Management Competencies of Support Staffordshire managers
  1. Leadership through action
  2. Initiative within risk, management and governance frameworks
  3. Prioritisation with flexible approach to working hours and able to travel
  4. Line management through planning, performance and support
  5. Building and sustaining effective working relationships with a diverse range of people
  6. Facilitation, coaching, enabling others and conflict resolution
  7. Outcome focused project and programme management
  8. Financial, budgeting and basic accounting skills
  9. Analytical and problem solving skills
  10. Oral and written communication for marketing, service delivery and evaluation.
  1. Research, reviewing and objective evaluation skills, with the ability to propose and assess a range of options and make recommendations accordingly.
  1. Knowledge and understanding of traditional and innovative local tendering/procurement methods, especially in a local authority setting. The ability to engage community organisations in such processes appropriately and to support the management of change in this environment.
  1. Knowledge, skills and experience of providing IAG services to VCSE organisations; or comparable advice, training, education and communication skills.
  1. Ability to meet organisational development needs through a range of methods to deliver outcomes in an efficient manner; including high quality diagnostics action planning, group training/workshops, online support, use of templates/documents and self-help.
  1. Knowledge and understanding of high quality volunteer management involving large numbers of volunteers on a task-led and rota basis.
  1. High level skills in organisation, prioritisation and systematic thinking, building capacity into service delivery.
  1. Ability to develop and maintain expertise to a high level in one or more subject areas, in order to support colleagues and market expertise as a saleable service.
  1. Ability to work across organisations and build connections, especially in a Health and Care setting.
  1. Skills in IT/databases for monitoring and effective and efficient in generating outputs and outcomes data for reporting purposes.
  1. Willing and able to travel across the county with own transport or public transport.

August 2016