School Attendance Support Officer

What will you be doing?

You'll work directly with schools to review attendance data, identify patterns and trends, discuss individual cases and provide advice and guidance around attendance, inclusion and educational entitlement. You'll also meet with families, carry out home visits and work alongside partner agencies to understand the barriers affecting a child's attendance and education.

While you'll spend time working with children, families and schools, this isn't a direct intervention role. Rather than providing ongoing support yourself, you'll work alongside schools and partner agencies to identify barriers, influence decision making and make sure the right support is in place for children and young people. You'll often be the person bringing professionals together, offering guidance, challenging where needed and helping move situations forward.

You'll be comfortable having constructive but sometimes challenging conversations, whether that's supporting a family to improve attendance or holding schools to account where practice isn't meeting expected standards.

You'll need to balance support with accountability. There will be times when you're helping families access support and times when you'll need to follow statutory processes where attendance concerns remain.

The role combines relationship building, problem solving, investigation, case management and partnership working. It's rewarding work, but it can also be demanding, so we're looking for someone who is resilient, organised and confident managing competing priorities.

Why Join Us?

School attendance sits at the centre of so many positive outcomes for children and young people. When attendance improves, opportunities improve too.

You'll join a knowledgeable and supportive team who are passionate about the work they do and genuinely support one another. The service has evolved significantly in recent years, with clear expectations, strong leadership and a real commitment to delivering the best outcomes for children, young people and schools.

Alongside a rewarding career, we offer:

• Flexible and family friendly working arrangements
• Generous annual leave
• Local Government Pension Scheme
• Learning and development opportunities
• Health and wellbeing support
• Employee benefits and discounts

About you

You may already work within education, inclusion, attendance, safeguarding, health, social care or another role supporting children and families and be looking for a new challenge.

You'll be confident communicating with a wide range of people and able to build positive relationships whilst remaining professional when conversations become challenging.

You'll be organised, able to manage a busy caseload and comfortable balancing competing demands. You'll know how to gather information, analyse situations and make sound decisions based on the evidence available.

This role would particularly suit someone with experience in schools, attendance, pastoral support, inclusion or education welfare who enjoys influencing outcomes and working collaboratively to support children and young people. If you're someone who can see the bigger picture, remain calm when situations are complex and work positively with schools and families alike, you'll thrive in this role.

We're particularly interested in hearing from people who:

• Have experience working with children, young people and families.
• Have experience within education, health, social care or a related setting.
• Can build effective working relationships with schools and partner agencies.
• Are confident managing sensitive conversations and challenging situations.
• Have strong organisational and case management skills.
• Share our commitment to improving outcomes for vulnerable children and young people.

Our benefits

You can also see our full list of employee benefits on our careers site here: Why you should work for us | West Northamptonshire Council

About us

At West Northants Council, it’s about our people. People who thrive with ambition, bubble with new ideas, demand better ways of working, caring about every detail, and who never shy away from a challenge. Our culture is a gateway for new experiences. A place to forge new opportunities. To empower you in your career and unite you with like-minded people.

Our vision is ‘to make West Northants a great place to live, work, visit and thrive’. We truly stand by this and work hard every day to make this a reality. Our corporate values, THRIVE, stand for: Trust, High Performance, Respect, Innovate and Empower, they underpin everything we do and how we deliver services.  

We are committed to ensuring diversity, equality, equity, and inclusion is woven into the fabric of WNC and everything we do, to enable all colleagues to develop and maximize their full potential.  We are a disability confident employer, a member of the Armed Forces Covenant, and a Care Leaver Covenant partner

The following film was created by us to communicate our intentions - watch WNC colleagues explain what DEI means to us.

If you need additional support or reasonable adjustments during the application process, including needing the job description in another format or language, please email careers@westnorthants.gov.uk for support.

Please note we reserve the right to close the advert early if we receive a high volume of suitable applications, so we recommend applying as soon as possible to avoid disappointment.

West Northants Council, where careers thrive.