Free Entitlement Support Officer

About Us At Hounslow

We’d love you to join us at the London Borough of Hounslow! Our people are deeply committed to providing excellent services to our residents, doing all we can to make lives as good as they can be.

We are an outstanding council, serving an outstanding borough. With brilliant, visionary leadership, a dynamic Cabinet and a can-do culture, we’ve built strong partnerships which have transformed how we serve one of London’s most diverse boroughs. Hounslow is the world in one place and full of potential. We are stepping up for our residents like never before.

About Our Commitment To Diversity And Inclusion

We live by five core values: Lead with Heart, Do New, Pass on the Power, Harness the Mix and Be a Rock. All our work has equality, diversity and inclusion at its very heart, best articulated in “Harness the Mix”. It's about breaking down barriers between our parts and people and unlocking the problem-solving power of our amazing mix of minds. We serve a diverse community, we have a diverse workforce and we are committed to being an inclusive employer.

We work hard to create representation across our workforce and leadership community, we have thriving employee network groups and our learning and development programmes help us lead, model and breathe ways of working that eliminate inequality, inequity, injustice and bias.

As part of this and under our commitments as a Disability Confident Employer, we make reasonable adjustments to accommodate our candidates. There’s space for you to tell us what you need within our application form.

Our Benefits

If you join us, you’ll have access to a range of employee benefits. Read more about these here.

About The Role

• Your professional accountability is to support the effective administration of the free entitlement for children aged 9 months - 5 years. You do this by carrying out outreach activities in order to increase the take up of the entitlements, by providing a childcare brokerage service to families eligible for the entitlement for 2-year-old children from families that receive additional government support by signposting families to all forms of government’s financial support towards the cost of childcare.
• Statutory duties relating to the Childcare Act 2016 and the Childcare Act 2006 are met, managing the day to day administration of the National programmes.
• This position involves hybrid working and your time will be split between the workplace (Hounslow House), working from home, traveling across the borough visiting providers and raising the profile of the programme.

About The Team You’ll Be Working In

• You work in a team that delivers a high-quality service to Hounslow families, Early Years childcare providers, Council colleagues and outside agencies. You ensure all practice is compliant with relevant statutory guidance documents as well as Hounslow Council’s governance arrangements.

About You

• Ensure that the journey and experience for parents with children under 5 is the very best that it can be.
• To have a thorough understanding of the statutory guidance for local authorities relating to early education and childcare and the duties that are placed on local authorities.
• To act, at all times, in line with the professional standards of conduct and performance as defined by the London Borough of Hounslow’s Code of Conduct.
• To work according to the Council’s data protection and confidentiality standards.
• To support the brokerage service to those parents and carers of 2-year old children from families that receive additional government support who may find it difficult to access childcare without additional support.
• To carry out outreach activities to:
• Support towards the take up of the childcare support expansion.
• Encourage all families to access their free entitlement.
• Ensure the free entitlements for children aged 9 months to 5 years is embedded within the borough.
• To communicate effectively with parents/carers, providers and partner agencies etc. ensuring all information is:
• Accurate and follows data protection guidelines.
• Carried out with a high level of customer service.
• Carried out in a sensitive manner.
• To develop and maintain effective partnership working with Children’s Centres, Family Hubs and other agencies in order to promote the free entitlements for children aged 9 months – 5 years and ultimately increase take-up.
• To contribute to the development of marketing materials and promotion of the free entitlements.
• To keep up to date and accurate records on the appropriate database or spreadsheet complying with data protection guidelines.
• To carry out any other assigned duties relating to the post.

The top 5 things about you that are most important:

• You have the ability to develop a good working knowledge of local and national government initiatives in relation to the free childcare entitlements for children aged under 5 years of age.
• You can demonstrate a good level of IT skills (Word, Excel and Outlook) as well as good administrative skills, including record-keeping.
• You are versatile and adaptable with a strong commitment to making a difference to the lives of families.
• You have experience of engaging with parents and families from diverse backgrounds.
• You have the ability to:
• Communicate effectively and sensitively with parents/carers.
• Develop positive working relationships with a range of service users.
• Maintain confidentiality and professional boundaries at all times.

Enhanced DBS check is required.

When Interviews Will Be Held And Who To Contact

The key information you need about the role should be in the Role Profile, but if you have any further questions about the role, please contact:

Email: Jan.Milstead@Hounslow.gov.uk
Telephone: 0208 583 2734
Interviews for this job will be held during week commencing 5th May 2025.