Senior Programme Officer (SME) – SEND and Alternative Provision Sufficiency

Please apply online via the link provided. Please note, we do not accept CVs submitted without a fully completed online application form.

Build Something That Matters

Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council has made a significant and deliberate investment in children’s services. The Children in Care Sufficiency Strategy 2026-2030 is a Cabinet-approved, four-year programme designed to change how Barnsley plans for, commissions and delivers provision for children in care and children with special educational needs and disabilities. It’s funded, it’s live, and it’s already delivering.

The strategy works across three pillars: reducing avoidable entry into care, stabilising placements for vulnerable adolescents, and strengthening how the Council commissions and directly provides residential and specialist care. The interventions it funds include Reset Home, Mockingbird constellation fostering, a new Vulnerable Adolescent Pathway, a Reunification Fund, a strengthened kinship offer, and Barnsley’s own internal residential homes.

This sits alongside one of the most significant periods of national reform in children’s social care and SEND in a generation. Barnsley has chosen to get ahead of that, investing in real change rather than waiting to react.

The workforce that delivers this will grow alongside the programme. The strategy sets out additional staffing capacity across specialist intervention services, the Adolescent Pathway, commissioning and the development and operation of internal residential provision. Some of those roles are in development and will be advertised as the programme progresses.

The five roles we’re recruiting to now are the Programme Management Office: the team that sits at the centre of all three pillars, keeps the programme on track, maintains the evidence base, and provides the governance and assurance infrastructure that makes everything else possible.

If you want to be part of building something that genuinely changes outcomes for children in Barnsley, we’d like to hear from you.

SEND sufficiency is one of the most complex and consequential areas of children’s services right now, and Barnsley is investing seriously in getting it right. The programme includes a significant capital build for new SEND provision and work to secure High Needs Stability Grant funding. That grant is conditional on demonstrating credible delivery against the Council’s local SEND reform plan, which means the evidence base this role maintains is not an administrative exercise. It’s what makes the funding possible.

Reporting to the Head of Programme Management Office, you’ll bring subject matter expertise in SEND, alternative provision or high needs sufficiency planning. You’ll understand the statutory framework, know how to read EHCP and demand

data, and be able to translate that into the sufficiency assessments and evidence base the programme depends on.

Like the Children in Care SPO role, strong analytical and report writing skills are essential. You’ll be producing analysis that informs gateway decisions and supports capital business cases. This is detailed, consequential work that requires someone who is thorough, precise and committed to getting it right.

If you have a background in SEND strategy, specialist commissioning or high needs planning in a local authority context, and you want to apply that expertise in a programme that is genuinely funded and moving, this is a strong opportunity.

For more information https://www.barnsley.gov.uk/services/jobs/childrens-services-roles