SEND Early Years Team Lead

We are a creative, connected and forward-thinking service.  Together with families and settings, we deliver high quality SEND Support to children in their early years, with a clear focus on promoting early communication, learning and school readiness, with the aim of helping all children to thrive.

Coventry’s SEND Early Years Team play a key role in maintaining the quality of our local SEND provision.  Our respected teachers and support staff have excellent relationships with staff in settings as well as professionals from other disciplines. Our teachers work particularly closely with the Council’s educational psychology team to ensure children with the most complex needs are well supported.

We value diverse perspectives and experiences and are striving to create a workplace culture that is inclusive, is accepting of all and is free from discrimination and bias.

In line with our One Coventry Values, we want to ensure that our communities are represented across our workforce. A vital part of this is ensuring we are a truly inclusive organisation that encourages diversity in all respects, including diversity of thinking. We particularly welcome applicants from minority ethnic, LGBT+, disabled and neurodiverse communities to make a real difference to our residents so that equity and respect remains at the heart of everything we do.

Our Values are:

• Open and fair: We are fair, open, and transparent.
• Nurture and develop: We help and encourage everyone to be their best and do their best.
• Engage and empower: We talk and listen to others, working together as one.
• Create and innovate: We embrace new ways of working to continuously improve.
• Own and be accountable: We work together to deliver the best services for our residents.
• Value and respect: We put diversity and inclusion at the heart of all we do.

The purpose of the job is to lead our specialist SEND Early Years Team, which is part of our integrated SEND Service, supporting children from birth into Reception.

Key activities include:

• Ensuring that the team is highly effective and accountable for securing strong outcomes for children and families.
• Maintaining close partnerships with families and ensuring that they help to shape the delivery of services for early years children with special educational needs.   
• Working closely with early years settings and schools to ensure our wider children’s workforce have a good understanding of SEND and their role in providing support.
• Ensuring that the local area maintains its excellent professional development offer for early years professionals.
• Ensure that the SEND Inclusion Fund is administered in a fair and effective way.

To help you in this role, we can offer:

• A strong and committed SEND team with a vibrant mix of teachers, psychologists and support staff;
• A Council who are passionate about inclusion and supporting children and young people with SEND.
• Excellent partnerships with schools, which facilitate co-production and creative working.   

This post is exempted under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 and as such appointment to this post will be conditional upon the receipt of a satisfactory response to a check of police records via Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS).

We’d love to hear from you if you are a qualified teacher with:

• The commitment and passion needed to deliver excellent outcomes for children with SEND in their early years.
• An outstanding knowledge and understanding of SEND needs, legislation and how to provide effective pedagogical support in early years and school settings.  
• Excellent leadership skills, including the capacity to empower a team of professionals and knowledge of how to deliver and drive forward strategy across a local areas.
• The ability to build and maintain strong partnerships, working across professional boundaries to build and improve systems.

Please contact Sally Longden for further information or to arrange an informal conversation. sally.longden@coventry.gov.uk 

Interview date(s): 22 May 2025

If you need help or support to complete your application, please visit our accessibility page to see how we can assist you.

Guaranteed Interview Scheme - As part of our commitment to inclusion, we offer guaranteed interviews for specific groups of people. To qualify, you'll need to meet the minimum requirements for the role and identify with one of the below criteria:

• Members of the Armed Forces and veterans
• Are currently in care or have previously been in care
• If you consider yourself to be disabled or if you have a long-term health condition

For full details on the application process please read the attached document on our jobs page labelled 'Coventry City Council Application Process'. If there is any evidence of a candidate using AI to complete their application, then the application will be rejected unless the candidate can provide a justification which the Council considers to be reasonable.

Coventry has a proud, innovative and creative spirit that throughout its history has seen communities come together to tackle problems and bring about real social change.

We are cutting-edge, challenging, youthful, vibrant and diverse.

At Coventry we are committed to excellence in everything we do. With around 5100 staff from a range of different backgrounds, our aim is to recruit and develop talented people who will focus on our customers, take responsibility, work together and find better ways of doing things.

To deliver the best services to our residents, we need the best people working for us to make a difference to our communities.

If you join us, we will provide a fantastic rewards and benefits package - to find out more please visit https://www.coventry.gov.uk/council-vacancies