Quality and Safety Officer- SEND & Children's Social Care

Job Purpose

The post holder will support the SEND Quality & Safety Officer and the Children's Social Care Quality & Safety Officer in ensuring that education services provided for children and young people with SEND, and social care services provided to the citizens of Dudley, are safe, appropriate, and delivered consistently. The post holder will also help ensure that providers comply with the terms and conditions of the Council's contracts.

This will be done by working directly with providers of services to facilitate development in a way that responds to the needs of children, young people and citizens as communicated through the Directorate's strategies, Market Position Statement, and shaping plan. This will be done by:

• Monitoring and inspecting as necessary all aspects of provision and contractual compliance in relation to Contracts/Agreements issued by the SEND commissioning team and the social care commissioning team to providers of services.
• Contributing via the monitoring process relevant information for the consistent operation of the commissioning cycle in accordance with agreed strategies, priorities, and systems.
• Supporting the SEND Quality & Safety Officer, the Social Care Quality & Safety Officer, the Commissioning Officers, and the wider Commissioning team in all aspects of their work, including bespoke projects.

Working Arrangements

The post holder's working week will be allocated as follows:

• 2 days per week - SEND: supporting the SEND Quality & Safety Officer with quality assurance and contract monitoring of SEND provision.
• 2 days per week - Social Care: supporting the Social Care Quality & Safety Officer with quality assurance and contract monitoring of social care provision.
• 1 day per week - Administration: administrative tasks across both areas, including recording, report preparation, scheduling of visits, and follow-up of provider actions.

Day-to-day work and priorities in each area will be agreed with the relevant Quality & Safety Officer, under the overall direction of the Service Manager - Commissioning. The allocation may be varied by agreement to meet service need.

Responsibilities

• To establish and maintain direct contact with all providers of services who have a contract to provide services for Dudley's SEND commissioning team and social care commissioning team, working alongside the relevant Quality & Safety Officer.
• To foster an enabling approach to monitoring activity.
• To facilitate and enable providers of services in the development and implementation of Quality Assurance, Quality Standard, Quality of Life, and other systems and their continued monitoring to accord with contract requirements.
• To ensure ongoing quality assurance, monitoring, and inspection of providers of services in relation to contractual compliance and legislative requirements across both SEND and social care provision.
• To be involved as appropriate in the ongoing development of the commissioning activity through support with business planning, action planning, engagement, etc.
• To be responsible for managing allocated workload within an agreed schedule and individual work plan, balancing the time allocated to SEND, social care, and administration as agreed with the Quality & Safety Officers.
• To deliver comprehensive reports to stakeholders relating to quality assurance visits undertaken with providers.
• To work autonomously in organising and implementing site visits and work plans.
• To discuss all aspects of non-compliance and remedial action with the providers in consultation with the relevant Quality & Safety Officer and Commissioning Officer. To ensure that providers are held to account when delivery of services does not meet Dudley's stringent requirements.
• To liaise and negotiate with all divisions of the Local Authority and external agents appropriately and constructively.