Support Officer

Role Responsibility

Support Officers provide high quality administrative support to a team of Kent Educational Psychologists who work in schools and settings across a geographical area. This role supports the South Kent team, covering Ashford, Folkestone & Hythe and Dover. The role is varied, rewarding and plays a vital part in ensuring the service can effectively support children and young people, schools and families. 

Duties include general administration, liaison with Educational Psychologists, schools, parents and partner agencies, maintaining pupil records and databases, organising resources and equipment, and supporting the delivery of statutory and district educational psychology services. As a key first point of contact for the service, you will handle a range of enquiries sensitively and professionally, maintaining confidentiality and ensuring information is communicated accurately and efficiently. This includes supporting the service's response to urgent situations by receiving calls from schools experiencing critical incidents or crises and ensuring key information is promptly passed to the appropriate Educational Psychologist.

The role offers opportunities to support a variety of Educational Psychology Service initiatives and work strands throughout the year. Depending on service priorities, this may include providing administrative support for projects such as the Parent Consultation Line, Emotional Based School Avoidance (EBSA), Emotional Literacy Support Assistant (ELSA) and other service developments.

You will be responsible for maintaining accurate records, entering and monitoring data on service databases and systems, producing reports and tracking service activity. The role also involves supporting statutory Education, Health and Care Needs Assessment processes and ensuring work is completed within required timescales. Accuracy, attention to detail and strong organisational skills are essential.

You will liaise regularly with schools, multi-agency partners and parents, requiring excellent communication and interpersonal skills. You will need a professional and approachable telephone manner, the ability to communicate sensitively with a wide range of people and the confidence to manage competing priorities in a busy environment.

We are looking for someone who is well organised, numerate, attentive to detail and confident in the use of Microsoft Office applications, databases and digital systems. You will need to be flexible, adaptable and able to work both independently and as part of a team. The ability to prioritise workloads, respond to changing service demands and maintain confidentiality at all times is essential.

Occasional travel may be required to support service delivery. The successful candidate must therefore be able to travel across a wide geographical area in a timely and flexible manner when required.

This post is subject to a Basic Disclosure Application to the Disclosure and Barring Service.

This post is considered by KCC to be a customer-facing position. The Council therefore has a statutory duty under Part 7 of the Immigration Act (2016) to ensure that post holders have a command of spoken English/Welsh sufficient for the effective performance of the job requirements. The appropriate standards are set out in the Job Description/Person Specification.

Contact Details

If you would like to find out more about the role, please do not hesitate to contact -

Rachel Wilding, Business Support Manager:

rachel.wilding@kent.gov.uk

About the Company

Work that works for you and us - let's talk flexibility!

KCC is committed to building a workforce which reflects the diversity of the county's working residents, encouraging applications from people of all ages, abilities, genders, sexual orientations, ethnic backgrounds, faiths and those with caring responsibilities, and aspires to create an inclusive workplace where everyone can be themselves at work.

Please note - if you are interested, please apply soon as possible as the closing date for this advert may be earlier than stated should a number of suitably qualified candidates apply.