Job title: Personal Education Plan Co-ordinator
Salary: PO3 £40,221.00 - £43,421.04
Contract: 1 x Full-time, temporary/fixed term (maternity cover)
Hours: 37
The Virtual School is looking to appoint temporary maternity cover for a Personal Education Plan Co-ordinator. This exciting and varied role supports planning for children in a range of social care contexts that promotes their learning and education. Your role will be ensuring that all children have a plan that captures their strengths and needs as a learner, helps remove barriers to their progress and promotes learning and education as protective factors. You will be supporting the team around the child and their school/setting in enabling children to thrive in learning, to attend, enjoy, attain and achieve at every age and stage.
You will be working with a committed and passionate team and across the Children and Families directorate to promote inclusive practice and provision in schools and settings and to ensure that plans support improved educational outcomes for the children for whom the Virtual School has responsibilities. You will be ensuring that their learning needs are accurately identified and captured in their plans so that schools and carers, social workers, foster carers, adopters, kinship carers and birth families can ensure that children are attending, attaining and achieving.
You will be a qualified teacher with an excellent understanding of the needs of children and young people who have experienced all kinds of social care intervention with a particular understanding of the graduated approach and especially around children who are likely to have social, emotional and mental health needs. You will be able to build personal and professional credibility with schools, settings, social workers, SEND services, foster and kinship carers, residential services, adopters, birth families and children and young people and promote inclusive practice and provision.
You will be a passionate advocate for the rights of children whose lived experiences might have increased their vulnerabilities to poorer outcomes and belong to cohorts who often do less well in learning. You will see the positives and potential in our children and young people and will hold for them the highest aspirations and ambitions for their education and future life chances and promote those values in the teams and services you work with.
You will be able to use a wide range of data and information to ensure that personal education plans and others appropriately address children’s strengths and needs and will help develop and deliver training and CPD to schools and services.
You will be supporting the Virtual School, the local authority, schools and services to comply with statutory and non-statutory duties in relation to a range of cohorts and draw on evidence-based practice and interventions that support children to achieve their learning potential. You will have access to a wide range of training and CPD both from within the team and through a wealth of opportunities provided by Leeds City Council.
You will be working in an environment of high support and high challenge and will be accountable to the Corporate Parenting Board, Have a Voice Council and Care Leavers Council and you will keep and uphold all aspects of our Promise to children looked after and care leavers and you will help us deliver to Wish number 10 that all children are in learning settings that meet their needs.
We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults.
A Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check against the Children’s barred list will be carried out on preferred candidates.
We promote diversity and want a workforce that reflects the population of Leeds and the communities we serve. Leeds City Council is an Inclusive employer, ranked 70 on the Stonewall top 100 employers 2023 list. We are also an Age friendly employer, a Mindful employer and a Disability Confident leader.
All new Leeds City Council appointments are made subject to the satisfactory completion of a six month probationary period.
This role is based in the UK. Employment is conditional on confirmation of the right to work in the UK - either as a UK or Irish citizen, under the EU Settlement scheme or having secured any other relevant work visa. If you do not have the right to work in the UK and the role does not meet eligibility for sponsorship, please consider carefully whether you meet the eligibility to apply.
Job Description
Job purpose
1. To enable the local authority and the Virtual School fulfil their responsibilities to ensure children that are looked after (CLA) have a high quality personal education plan (PEP)
2. To ensure that high quality, effective PEPs are contributing to the local authority and the Virtual School’s statutory functions in promoting the educational attainment and achievement of Leeds Children Looked After (CLA).
3. To enable the local authority and the Virtual School to demonstrate the progress children make in learning from the day they become looked after
4. To contribute to improving educational outcomes for CLA by working in partnership with birth families, designated teachers, inclusion learning services, foster carers, social work services and IROs.
5. To ensure that regardless of the outcome of the care plan e.g. return to parent/s, kinship care, long term fostering or adoption, special guardianship or child arrangement, parents and carers have a robust plan to enable their child to attend, attain and achieve
Responsibilities
6. To ensure that care planning and PEP processes comply with the statutory duty of the local authority to promote the educational attainment of CLA.
7. To work with designated teachers, services for children looked after, foster carers to ensure that all CLA have a quality Personal Education Plan that supports them to fulfil their educational potential.
8. To gather in-depth, qualitative and quantative information from a wide range of sources, setting and services about a child’s learning at the point they become looked after e.g. their current attainment and progress, attendance, exclusion, provision type, special educational needs and disability, engagement with other services, the birth family’s ability to engage with their child’s learning e.g. educational psychology services, SENIT, previous schools attended, individual school support plans, prior attainment data and social, emotional and mental health needs
9. To work closely with the Virtual School consultant, social workers, carers and designated teachers to ensure that all CLA have a school place or provision in settings that are good or outstanding including those CLA who are educated out of authority.
10. To assist schools and social workers in the completion of high quality PEPs.
11. To advise schools on the effective use of CLA Pupil Premium Plus, based on the overall assessment of the child’s needs to have the greatest impact on progress, attendance, attainment and achievement.
12. To ensure that CLA have a voice in planning their education and the services that support them.
The duties outlined are not meant as an exhaustive list and will also comprise any other duties within the spirit of the post commensurate with the job evaluation outcome for this post.
Qualifications
13. Qualified Teacher Status and/or a range of other teaching/learning/education qualifications required.
14. Relevant technical qualification and membership of relevant professional bodies (where relevant) and evidence of ongoing professional development.
Essential requirements It is essential that the candidate should be able to demonstrate the following criteria for the post. Candidates will only be shortlisted for interview if they can demonstrate that they meet all the essential requirements.
15. A clear understanding of the Child Friendly City concept and the importance of the voice and influence of children and young people.
16. Knowledge of research, policy and developments in best practice and legislation relating to Children Looked After in both care and education.
17. Knowledge of the impact of early childhood trauma, abuse and neglect on a child’s learning
18. Knowledge of how progress and attainment in learning are measured across all ages and stages and what services are available to support children to learn
19. Knowledge of the local authority’s safeguarding framework for children in need of help and protection and those who may need to come into the care of the local authority
20. Experience within the relevant environment; mainly schools and/or other learning environments e.g. children’s centres, colleges or local authority learning support services
21. Experience of developing high quality, personalised plans that bring together key stakeholders to deliver accelerated progress in learning
22. Excellent communication skills with the ability to form positive relationships.
23. Ability to use qualitative and quantative data about a child’s learning to develop an effective plan to promote and accelerate their progress, attendance, attainment and achievement.
24. Ability to work on own initiative and as part of a team.
25. Ability to prioritise workload and work with a minimum of supervision.
26. A high degree of sensitivity to the lived experience of care for children and young people.
27. Ability to pass on vital information to line manager.
28. Working knowledge and understanding of Outcome Based Accountability (OBA) and Restorative Practice (RP).
29. Knowledge of how to develop child-centred plans for CLA with complex learning needs.
30. Ability to anticipate issues, plan solutions and make informed decisions by being creative, innovative and forward thinking.
31. Ability to work under pressure and to tight deadlines.
Essential Behavioural and other Characteristics
32. Understand and embrace and codes of conduct.
33. Committed to continuous improvement in all areas and work towards delivering theBest City Ambition of Health & Wellbeing, Inclusive Growth and Zero Carbon
34. Able to understand and observe Leeds City Council equality and diversity policies.
35. Carry out all duties having regard to an employee’s responsibility under Health and Safety Policies.
36. Willingness to actively participate in training and development activities.
37. Flexible and adaptable to change to assist other services as required commensurate to grade.
38. Participate in appraisal, training, and development activities.
39. Be aware of and comply with Leeds City Council policies and procedures.
40. Be aware of and support difference ensuring equality for all, working in an anti-discriminatory manner, upholding, equality & diversity.
41. Recognise and appropriately challenge any incidents of racism, bullying, harassment, victimisation, and any form of abuse, reporting any concerns to the appropriate person.
42. The Council has adopted a flexibility protocol and the role will be expected to work within these parameters.
Desirable requirements It is desirable that the candidate should be able to demonstrate the following criteria for the post. Candidates are not required to meet all the desirable requirements however these may be used to distinguish between candidates.
43. Ability to use creative thinking/solutions to engage children and young people and families in plans for their learning
44. Ability to gather a range of information and data from a wide range of sources, services and settings/locations and presenting these in a consistent and coherent manner
45. Ability to interpret and assess a wide range of data sources, qualitative and quantative to, devise quality plans that capture appropriate information to enable the team around the child to accelerate progress in learning and support the care planning process
46. Knowledge of the statutory function of the Virtual School
47. Knowledge of the SEND code of practice, the graduated response and how schools/settings are required to meet their statutory duties to children and families
48. Knowledge of effective strategies, practice and interventions that are most effective in accelerating the learning of looked after children
49. Experience of working within or for an educational setting
50. Experience of working effectively in teams and promoting a ‘can do’ attitude within an environment of continuous improvement and positive outcomes for children and young people
51. Working within services where conflict might arise or competing priorities can impact on relationships Persistence and perseverance
52. Empathy and understanding of the lived experience of care as experienced by birth families, children and young people and their carers
53. To model unconditional high regard for children and young people looked after in Leeds and to challenge negative stereotypes/language
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