Web Project Manager

SEND Consortium

SEND Consortium
National vision, local delivery

The SEND Consortium brings together eight organisations which support children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities, and their families.

Vision

Our vision is that all children and young people with special education needs and disabilities, and their families, get the support to thrive and succeed.

Mission

Collectively, we want to ensure that all children with special needs and disabilities can access a good choice of timely, high quality services in convenient locations.

Who we are

The SEND Consortium comprises Ambitious about Autism, Contact a Family, Dyslexia Action, I CAN, Kids, Mencap, the National Autistic Society and Scope.

Track record

We all work at a national level. Consortium members have a shared interest, and long track record, in providing high quality, innovative, not-for-profit services for thousands of children and young people (aged 0-25) with special needs and disabilities, and their families.

Since Spring 2011, members have been working together to facilitate joint working across key national organisations in the special needs and disability fields. Our focus is to develop new innovative service that responds to the emerging policy and market agenda. We believe that the third sector has the right skills and experience to play a pivotal role in supporting children, young people with SEN and disabilities and their families and that by working collaboratively we will be better able to develop, test and roll out a new service that achieve better outcomes and best value.

Our funding

We have recently won grants from the Department of Health and the Department for Education to develop and pilot SENDirect. SENDirect will be an online national brokerage service which will support parents with disabled children manage personal budgets and help develop the market of service providers.

Role Brief:

1.Background

Personalisation is being cited as a key development in education, health and social care policy for children and young people (CHYP) with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).

However:

  • services available to support families / carers to access services are limited;
  • there is no systematic mechanism to stimulate a growth in services to meet demand;
  • there is no service available for providers to locate and quantify potential demand and to enable them to gain the knowledge and skills they may need to meet the needs of children and young people with special needs and their families/carers;
  • Families/carers are often only provided with information about services available in their locality, whilst specialist services are often only provided sub-regionally or regionally.

This outcome is that families/carers who have a personalised budget, or are considering accessing one, are not able to purchase services that meet their needs and potential providers are not aware of or able to respond to this need. Without a service connecting clients with the provider market, it is difficult to see how the personalisation agenda can progress.

The SEND Consortium is working to develop a national service that will meet these needs by:

  • enabling families to express their needs and preferences for services through a national online brokerage service;
  • analysing and aggregating this demand for services;
  • working with providers on a local, regional and national level to develop their services and negotiate terms to meet these needs;
  • Publicising the resulting new services to families on a national basis.

The consortium is looking to recruit, a web projectmanager to support this project. This post is funded until April 2015.

Remuneration

This role has been assessed at £42,153 per annum.

Job Title: / Web Project Manager
Responsible To: / SEND Consortium Project Director
Team Membership: / SEND Consortium
Location: / City Road office London
Salary:
Hours of work: / 35 per week, to be worked at times agreed with the post holder, between 9.30 – 5.30 Monday to Friday. Some travel and overnight stays are part of this role.
Job Purpose: / We are seeking a proactive, and detail focused web project manager to direct and oversee the build of a national online brokerage service for families.
This role will include project managing the commissioning of tender processes, supplier selection, quality assurance, testing and data management systems and any other elements necessary to ensure the success of the online delivery element of SENDirect.
Main Relationships: / Internal: Staff working on the SENDirect project, SEND Consortium members, relevant staff within members’ organisations, Contact a Family senior managers and Engagement and Support Team; Project Board,
External: Across the 9 local authority partners, technology partners, expert advisory panel and complimentary online services.
NOTE: SENDirect is a project of the SEND Consortium. The SEND Web Project Manager post is hosted by and bound by the employment terms and conditions of the lead partner of the SEND Consortium: Contact a Family.
Duties and Key Responsibilities /
  • To provide day-to-day management, vision and technical leadership for the online element of SENDirect’s work.
  • Development and quality assurance of specifications and requirements
  • Oversee selection of and contacted agreements withsuppliers,
  • Oversee testing and agile development of online offer
  • Oversee integration & data management with other online service providers in the nine local authority areas
  • To manage and coordinate work of associates/ contractors undertaking works on online service.
  • To maintain effective communications with vendors, peers and internal staff in support of assigned projects.
  • Research, evaluate and make recommendations on technologies to support development & roll out of programme
  • To contribute to reporting to funders on the progress of SENDirect
  • To support the Project Director in servicing the Project Board, Implementation Group and Expert Advisors Group.
  • Undertake any additional reasonable tasks as directed by line manager.

Develop and Manage a personal work programme /
  • Actively participate in Contact a Family’s performance management processes including appraisal and induction.
  • Proactively maintain the knowledge, skills and networks needed to deliver this role.
  • Work effectively with SEND Consortium members, external partners and Contact a Family’s staff to fulfil this role.
  • Support Contact a Family’s core values and carry out all responsibilities with due regard to Safeguarding Children and Equal Opportunities policies and procedures.

Person Specification

The person appointed will be expected to have the key essential skills, knowledge and experience listed below. The items under the heading ‘desirable attributes’ will also be useful for the SEND Consortium and the post holder. However, candidates who do not have these desirable attributes should not be deterred from submitting an application.

Knowledge/ Qualifications
Essential Criteria
  1. Proven experience heading up web development for an online marketplace or similar type of site.
  2. Proven project management skills and experience.
  3. In depth knowledge of modern web technologies including HTML5, Php, JavaScript, browser/mobile/platform compatibilities, etc
  4. Solid appreciation of usability concerns and good design. Experience measuring success criteria and using analytics/SEO and search tests to support product development
  5. A commitment to safeguarding children and equal opportunities and diversity
  6. Ability to plan, manage and deliver work to agreed deadlines
  7. Excellent communication, presentation and written skills
  8. Resilient - able to work on own initiative and as part of a team
  9. Budget management skills
  10. Computer literate with working knowledge of all Word, Microsoft Project, Excel and PowerPoint
  11. Ability to travel across England regularly
  12. Interpersonal skills and the ability to lead and build effective partnerships with individuals and organisations
  13. Ability to inspire

Desirable criteria
  1. Proven track record of working in collaboration with a range of stakeholders at a senior level including partners, service users, commissioners and funders
  2. Mobile web development; detecting and support device capabilities, optimisations, etc
  3. Measuring site performance, optimising web content and JavaScript performance. Experience with caching techniques including CDNs.