Specialist Project Officer - Professional Standards and Audits Service in Chelmsford

Fixed Term / Secondment (12 months), Full Time £38,284 to £45,039 per annum

Location: Chelmsford

Working Style: Anywhere worker

Closing Date: 26th July 2026

Please note this is a hybrid-working role contractually based in Chelmsford. The role allows for home-working 2-3 days per week and a requirement to attend other sites in line with business need. This is a maternity cover opportunity and can be offered on a 12 month fixed-term contract or secondment basis.

Children and Families is recognised as a service in which social work can develop and prosper, with a culture of collaboration, integrity and compassion; promoting the development and wellbeing of children, young people and their families; protecting them from neglect and abuse. Working together with partners delivering a range of early help, family support and effective social work interventions which build resilience, remove barriers and enable children and young people to look forward to a brighter future.

The Opportunity

The Specialist Project Officer is part of the Professional Standards and Audits Service (PSAS). The role is responsible for co-ordinating and maintaining the delivery of a busy audit and inspection portfolio to a consistently excellent standard, which requires being highly organised to co-ordinate and aggregate large amounts of data, develop dashboards, and produce reports efficiently to meet deadlines, and confident presentation skills. With a sound understanding of Children’s Services, the postholder represents the function, building credible, influential relationships with senior leaders both internally and externally. As the lead for inspection activity for Children’s Social Care sits within the service, you will directly support the Lead for Inspection preparation activity.

The Specialist Project Officer needs to be confident and skilled in engaging and communicating with all staff and managers in Children’s and Family Services, and the complex and large multi-agency group. The role requires high emotional intelligence and political awareness. The Specialist Project Officer needs to develop and sustain professional relationships with a diverse group of staff and managers at all levels of the service. The politically sensitive nature of the material gathered, analysed and shared needs to be managed with high awareness of risk and impact.

The Experience You Will Bring

• Educated to degree level or equivalent by experience with evidence of continuing professional development and expert knowledge in relevant professional area.
• Experience of successfully providing project delivery or programme support.
• Desirable operational knowledge and experience within children and families’ services and/or across partner agencies and stakeholders.
• An understanding of the role of Quality Assurance and the use of data to deliver outcomes within this area of work.
• Interest in delivering public services in a complex, multi-agency environment.
• Preferred experience of working in a political environment with skills in understanding and responding to different and/or cross organisational perspectives.
• Strong data management, analysis skills, building and maintaining trackers and dashboards.
• Advanced working knowledge of IT programmes with strong report writing and organisational skills.
• Aptitude for designing visual maps and bulletins with an understanding of the design and digital platforms.
• Effective communicator able to build good relationships with a range of colleagues and stakeholders; assertive in communications with the ability to persuade, influence and negotiate effectively.
• Uses initiative and judgement and decision-making skills in providing quality assurance to the work undertaken for customers.
• Proven ability to work flexibly, be proactive and adapt to changing circumstances.
• Works well under pressure with a high level of emotional resilience, able to work and respond at pace.

The role requires you to be mobile throughout a wider operational area including travelling around the county of Essex and beyond, transporting service users and their belongings and to be able to do so in an emergency. Driving licence and car or the ability to meet the mobility requirements of the role through other means is essential.

As part of employment with Essex County Council (ECC) should your role require a DBS check you will be required to register with the DBS update service. The DBS update service ensures all registered DBS certificates are kept up to date and allows authorised parties to view the status of your certificate. This is an annual subscription, and you will be responsible for ensuring this is maintained.

Essex County Council is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and vulnerable adults and expects all employees and volunteers to share this commitment.