Our Values

It’s great to know that you are interested in working with us at Coventry City Council. As a prospective employee, it is important that everyone who works for us is committed to our One Coventry values and shares our commitment to becoming a more diverse and inclusive organisation. 

Our Values are:

About the team we are recruiting to

We value diverse perspectives and experiences and are striving to create a workplace culture that is inclusive, is accepting of all and is free from discrimination and bias.

In Coventry, we are working hard to build something special. Children and families are at the heart of everything we do, and we believe they deserve the best outcomes.  Children’s Services provides a wide range of statutory and non-statutory duties, from Early Help Services, through to children who are looked after.  

The service reflects and responds to the changing needs of children and their families.  It works to enable a reflective and flexible approach, with a strong Early Help offer and a real focus on Relationship Based Practice and Signs of Safety, which focuses on intervention and keeping families together. 

Our Family Hubs are at the core of our Early Help Offer to children, young people and their families and provide universal and targeted support to Coventry’s residents, Coventry has pioneered the development of Family Hubs, and this has received regional and national recognition.  We are now able to develop and mature this offer further in alignment with the new national Family Hub and Start for Life Programme, with a renewed focus on ensuring all children have the best start in life and all parents are supported to access high quality services that are interconnected and enable positive relationships to bring about sustainable life changes.

What is the job role?

Fixed Term Contract until the end of March 2025.

The Start for Life Project Manager will be responsible for development and mobilisation of the Start for Life offer to all families in Coventry with children aged 0-2 years and their prospective, new and established parents and carers.

The role will line manage a team of partnership practitioners and Family Hub leaders across the city to help ensure consistency and equity of offer, and that services meet the needs of a range of communities and groups in Coventry, promote a culture where the babies, young children and their families are at the heart of everything we do.

The project manager will co-ordinate a multiagency forum and leadership team to ensure that our Family Hubs effectively delivers the National programme, ensuring evidence-based interventions and programmes are deployed and can evidence the impact of our work. The project manager will drive change and continual improvement of early years services to children and their families in Coventry in collaboration with other senior colleagues across the LA and partners agencies including those from education, health and the voluntary and community sector.

The project lead will need to undertake management of delivering service improvement, including the effective management of end-to-end projects including reporting regular on programme deleivery returns, financial spend, and management information including key performance measures and be confident in providing verbal and written reports.

This post is exempted under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 and as such appointment to this post will be conditional upon the receipt of a satisfactory response to a check of police records via Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS).

Who are we looking for?

The successful applicant will be self-organised, able to self-initiate, prioritise, manage challenging deadlines and take responsible for their own work. They will need to be a team player bit also to be courageous and be wiling to take a lead, whilst collaborating and learning from others.

You will need to be able to take own new information, synthesis and analysis this and make key decisions drawing own research, national and local policy and feedback from the local and national family Hub teams.

We are looking for someone that is creative, and can think outside the box whilst also drawing on the evidence base and best practice in the field of early years and family support.  You may have had senior leadership or practice responsibilities from a variety of fields including health, early years education and childcare, work in the faith based or Voluntary and community sector or children’s services.

When applying for this role you will be asked to write a personal statement, when writing your personal statement please include the following:

• Proven experience of successful change/project management including managing resources (including budgetary control) and managing the delivery of high performance through people
• Working with stakeholders, partners and/or elected members and enabling collaboration across professional boundaries and supporting the integration of working practices
• A track record of developing & implementing continuous improvement in service delivery and evidencing impact on lives of members of the public

For full details on the application process please read the attached document labelled 'Coventry City Council Application Process'

Interview date(s): Wednesday 26th April 2023

About Coventry

Coventry has a proud, innovative and creative spirit that throughout its history has seen communities come together to tackle problems and bring about real social change.

We are cutting-edge, challenging, youthful, vibrant and diverse.

At Coventry we are committed to excellence in everything we do. With around 4800 staff from a range of different backgrounds, our aim is to recruit and develop talented people who will focus on our customers, take responsibility, work together and find better ways of doing things.

To deliver the best services to our residents, we need the best people working for us to make a difference to our communities.

If you join us, we will provide a fantastic rewards and benefits package - to find out more please visit https://www.coventry.gov.uk/council-vacancies

Coventry City Council