Personal Budgets & Direct Payments Lead

The Service & Team:

The Disabled Children & Therapy Service (DC&TS) is a specialist, multi-disciplinary team which supports disabled children, young people and their families, whose main need for services arises from their disability or their intrinsic condition. The service intervenes where children’s needs cannot be fully met by universal services alone; it includes statutory and Family Help services that undertake assessments and provide services and interventions at the acute and complex level of need. 

The Disabled Children’s Personal Budgets Team Lead will have county-wide responsibility for the allocation of work to the area personalisation support teams. The postholder will be responsible for the supervision of staff, quality assurance and performance management of the area teams, to ensure consistent best practice and outcomes for disabled children, young people and their families. There are three Personalisation Support teams working in the East, Mid and West, alongside the area DC&TS teams.

The Role:

The Disabled Children’s Personal Budgets Team Lead will have county-wide responsibility for the development of personal budgets and direct payment services across Children & Families Services, not just the DC&TS teams. The postholder will be responsible for overall performance, budget management, policy updates and inter-departmental and inter-agency liaison. The post-holder will represent to personalisation service regionally, nationally and in inspections.  The post-holder will ensure regular policy review and updates are produced to support practice and will produce an annual direct payments report. 

This is a public/customer-facing role, where the statutory English language requirement for public sector workers applies.                       

This position will be subject to a standard criminal record disclosure check.

Working Pattern:

The expected working pattern is Monday to Friday, 37 hours a week. 

What You’Ll Need To Succeed:

The post holder will have a thorough understanding and knowledge of legislation and statutory guidance to ensure Children & Families works within the correct legal frameworks which are relevant to direct payments and personal budgets.

The successful applicant will have an in-depth understanding of disability, and how this impacts on individual children and family lives. 

They will be able to manage within a budget and be competent in monitoring performance and in writing policies and reports. 

They will have a good understanding of how to lead a high performing team and be able to contribute to the DC&TS management group and network with key stakeholders across the Children's System. They will be confident in representing the service at regional and national events. 

Please read the role profile for the full details of this role attached below in this advert

What You’Ll Get In Return:

Cornwall Council’s ambition is to be an employer of choice, a high performing Council and a learning organisation. We commit to providing a reward and benefits package to attract, motivate and reward our employees. We offer a range of flexible working options to our staff. This helps provide our employees with a greater work/life balance. Whilst still ensuring that service needs are met.

Our core employee rewards and benefits include:

• a competitive salary.
• a defined benefit pension scheme, based on your career average earnings. This includes the option for extra voluntary contributions
• a generous annual leave entitlement with the potential to purchase additional leave.
• A national award-winning employee health and wellbeing programme
• Employee benefits scheme giving employees access to a wide range of discounts to local and national goods and services.

Additional Information:

Cornwall Council is unable to offer visa sponsorship or transfer existing sponsorship for this role.

The full role profile is attached here

We recommend saving a copy of this to refer to if you are invited to an interview.

For more information or an informal chat about the role please contact Yvette Yates, Head of Disabled Children & Therapy Service, yvette.yates@cornwall.gov.uk

Application Process

Please attach a supporting statement to your application, you can add your Education & Qualifications details manually using the application form timeline or you can upload your CV. Remember to demonstrate why you are suitable against each of the points marked as ‘Application’ on the Role Profile using examples from your experience or transferable skills. This might be through qualifications or descriptive examples from your work / personal experience, which clearly illustrates what you did and the effect it had. Guidance on how to complete your application can be found here – The application process.

Please note that applications cannot be edited after they have been submitted, please contact careers@cornwall.gov.uk if you have any queries or require assistance with your application.

Existing employees must apply using their Cornwall Council email address through the Opportunity Marketplace on Oracle.

Cornwall Council deliver services to more than half a million local people and over five million visitors a year. Working here - Cornwall Council

We are happy to talk about flexible working options such as part-time or compressed hours. More examples of our flexible working opportunities can be found here - flexible working options.

Fairness and inclusion are at the heart of our vision for Cornwall. In order to best serve our communities, we are striving to achieve a diverse workforce that is inclusive of all backgrounds, cultures and identities; e.g., race, disability, sex, gender, age, religion and sexual orientation. We are an equal opportunities and Disability Confident employer, and we will assess applicants on their merits.

Cornwall Council is committed to safeguarding and following safer recruitment principles to help make sure our staff and volunteers are suitable to work with children, young people and adults at risk. It’s a vital part of creating a safe and positive environment and making a commitment to keeping all service users safe from harm.