Head of Family Help Systems and Family Hubs

About the role

Head of Family Help System & Family Hubs

North Northamptonshire Council is seeking an experienced and dynamic leader for the role of Head of Family Help System & Family Hubs. This is a pivotal leadership position, responsible for the development, coordination and continuous improvement of the Family Help system across North Northamptonshire.

The postholder will lead the integration of Family Hubs, Family Help practice and multi‑agency early support pathways, ensuring a seamless, strengths‑based offer for children, young people and families from conception through to age 19 (or 25 for young people with SEND).

You will ensure that the local Family Help system is fully aligned with national Family Help reforms, the Families First Programme, the Children’s Social Care National Framework, and broader local and regional transformation plans. This includes embedding consistent delivery of ‘Right Support, Right Time, Right Person’ across all aspects of early support and Family Help practice.

Family Hubs sit at the heart of the Family Help system, providing accessible, community‑based support that brings together education, health, mental health, public health and voluntary and community sector services. Start for Life remains a core priority, ensuring babies, children and parents receive the right support in the critical early years.

What will you be doing?

As Head of Family Help System & Family Hubs, you will:

• Provide system‑wide leadership for the Family Help model across North Northamptonshire, ensuring clear pathways, shared practice standards and strong multi‑agency accountability.
• Lead the continued development and integration of Family Hubs, Start for Life and Family Help services, ensuring families experience a coherent and relational offer rather than fragmented services.
• Champion co‑production with children, young people and families, embedding lived experience into service design, delivery and evaluation.
• Ensure Family Help practice is strengths‑based, preventative, trauma‑informed and relational, with a strong focus on early identification and support.
• Work closely with Health, Education, Police, Public Health, the voluntary and community sector and Northamptonshire Children’s Trust to shape a unified approach to early support and family help.
• Represent North Northamptonshire Council as a senior system leader, influencing partners, shaping strategic direction and driving shared ownership of outcomes.
• Use data, insight and evidence to drive continuous improvement, ensuring the impact of Family Help is understood and improves outcomes for children and families.
• Provide strong leadership to teams, fostering a culture of learning, reflection and high‑quality practice.

This is a unique opportunity to shape and lead one of the most significant areas of children’s services reform, ensuring that families get the right help at the right time, before needs escalate.

About you

We are looking for a credible, collaborative and values‑driven leader with a strong track record of leading complex, multi‑agency systems and delivering transformational change.

You will bring:

• Significant experience of system leadership across children’s services, early help, family support or related fields.
• A strong understanding of national Family Help reforms, early intervention, prevention and integrated service models.
• Proven experience of leading and influencing multi‑agency partnerships across statutory and voluntary sectors.
• A clear commitment to co‑production, relational practice and reducing inequalities for children and families.
• Experience of driving service improvement using data, performance intelligence and evaluation.
• Strong financial and people management skills, with the ability to lead through change and support staff development.
• Excellent communication, influencing and strategic thinking skills, with the confidence to operate at senior partnership level.

If you are passionate about improving outcomes for children, young people and families and want to lead a system that truly puts families at the centre, we would love to hear from you.

Our Benefits

Here at North Northamptonshire Council, we’re transforming for the better, using all our creativity and imagination to create the best life for our local people.

You’ll find that we have a wide range of careers that may be more surprising than you think!

Why choose us?

We offer a vibrant working environment with:

• a competitive salary
• a pension scheme, where we pay a significant contribution on top of your contribution. It provides life cover and ill-health protection.
• lots of opportunities to develop your skills, knowledge and potential in a large unitary council
• generous leave entitlement (28 days, rising to 33 days) and bank holidays, plus the option to buy up to an extra 10 days
• hybrid and flexible working arrangements, where practicable for service needs to help you with a healthy work-life balance.

We provide a range of great benefits such as an Employee Assistance Programme, an Employee Benefits Scheme, wellbeing support, travel rates at HMRC rates, as well as supporting a range of active Employee Network Groups.

About us

Our Values and Behaviours

Our values define who we are and how we operate, by forming the foundation for how we interact with our customers, colleagues and provide our services. They are also at the forefront of our decision making and delivery and are:

Customer-focused
Respectful
Efficient
Supportive
Trustworthy

Our key commitments help ensure that the priorities we make, now and in the future, maintain the necessary breadth of focus in those areas that we believe matter most.

Disability Confident Employer

We are proud to be a recognised Disability Confident Employer and is committed to providing an inclusive recruitment process and will offer an interview to disabled applicants who meet the essential criteria for the role.

Our Employment and Disability Service provides bespoke support to individuals facing barriers to employment, helping them work towards their goals to start, stay and succeed in employment. For further information please click here The Employment and Disability Service (EADS) | North Northamptonshire Council

Armed Forces Community

The council obtained the Gold status award for the Defence Employer Recognition Scheme (ERS).

Further information can be found at Jobs and careers | North Northamptonshire Council (northnorthants.gov.uk)