Associate Designated Officer for SEND in Nottingham inNottingham PUBLISHED THU 27 FEB 2025 Jump to job information section

Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Integrated Care Board (ICB) are providing an exciting opportunity for an experienced professional to join and support the Designated Clinical Officer (DCO) for Special Education Needs and/or Disabilities (SEND).

The DCO for SEND plays a key role, as part of the leadership team for Nottingham City and Nottinghamshire local area SEND partnerships, ensuring health service providers and ICB commissioners meet statutory responsibilities an supporting collaborative working between health and local authority services and other SEND partners, for children and young people (CYP) with SEND aged 0-25 years, as set out in the Children and Families Act 2part 3).

We are looking to recruit a passionate advocate for CYP at the centre of improvements and decision making. The Associate Designated Officer for SEND will be required to support the DCO in delivering on these requirements, providing professional leadership and expertise on matters relating to SEND agenda across the local area partnerships.

The post holder will be required to lead on the operational delivery for SEND and provide expert knowledge and advice to support health services providers and local authority partners, across Nottingham City and Nottinghamshire County, (Bassetlaw included) in responding to their duties and improve outcomes and experiences for CYP with SEND and their families.

The post holder will act as a point of advice for parents, carers and young people on the health aspects of special educational needs.

This role will require, gaining, the understanding of complex commissioning and health service provider arrangements to be able to support and inform commissioners for CYP (0-25) health services.

About us

• Support the Designated Clinical Officer (DCO) for SEND to assure the ICB and NHS services are able to meet their statutory duties for children and young people with SEND aged 0-25 years.
• Manage highly complex arrangements and relationships between the Nottingham & Nottinghamshire ICB, health service providers, both Nottingham City and Nottinghamshire Local Authority partners and local area Parent Carer Forums (PCF), and stakeholders for education and social care to work in partnership with the ICB commissioning, quality, and contract teams, to inform on gaps in provision and support service development.
• Lead on or participate in, improvement activities to ensure system are able to improve experiences and outcomes for children with disabilities and SEND (0-25).
• To provide clinical expert advice to support local partners in their decision making.
• Work collaboratively with SEND system partnerships to develop good relationships and integrated approaches for embedding delivery of the Preparation for Adulthood (PfA) agenda.
• Lead on quality assurance improvements to ensure compliance of the ICB statutory duties for the Education, Health and Care (EHC) assessment and EHC Plan annual review process.
• Undertake analysis of data intelligence and quality reporting from health service providers, providing judgement for assurance and escalation of risks to DCO and ICB commissioning, contracts, and quality leads via agreed governance structures.
• The post holder will be required to support a system approach to the development of a SEND training competence framework across the system workforce and deliver training sessions via face-to-face events or online sessions, to the ICB, health service providers and wider partners workforce, as required.
• To assist the SEND local area partnerships in the preparation and readiness for joint local area SEND inspections, to demonstrate compliance with Joint Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission SEND inspection framework requirements.
• Deputise for the DCO in National and Local SEND forums, and undertaken any other duties deemed necessary by line manager to respond to local area partnership requirements, within your scope of practice.
• To act as an exemplar for Nottingham & Nottinghamshire ICBs vision and values