Early Years and Childcare Team Manager - Quality Improvement

The Opportunity

Salary: NJC Grade 12 £49,817 to £53,051 per annum

Contract Type: Permanent

Working Pattern: 37 hours per week, full time, Monday to Friday

Location: Countywide; your base location will be agreed with you at interview

Closing date: 28 September 2026

Interview date: 07 and 09 October 2026

Are you an experienced leader within Early Years and Childcare?

Do you enjoying developing and supporting others?

As an Early Years Team Manager for Quality Improvement, you will supervise a team of Early Years and Childcare Advisors, providing leadership and support to ensure that the play, care, and education of children is of the highest quality.

You will work closely with a range of internal and external professionals including Senior Advisors, Advisory Services, LADO, Safeguarding in Education team, Standards and Effectiveness team, and multi-agency working with health and social care.

Through your work with early years and childcare providers, you will lead and support early years education, development, childcare provision, and initiatives to improve children’s outcomes.

You will be working regularly with early years and childcare providers to deliver high quality care in line with the Early Years Foundation Stage Statutory Framework.

Key responsibilities of the role include:

• Providing leadership to your team with high quality advice, support, and training.
• Liaising and collaborating with teams, settings, and schools to identify outcomes for children.
• Supporting the development and implementation of the quality improvement strategy.
• Leading on new policy proposals, planning termly reviews of quality support and its impact, and developing improvement plans.
• Remaining up to date on local and national developments in the early years.
• Contributing to continuous improvement and development-based projects as required (project-based budgets up to £100,000).
• Developing, leading, and delivering early years training and networking for providers.
• Responsibility for the care, accuracy, confidentiality, and security of information.
• Administrative duties to write reports and strategic planning documents.
• Leading others through change.

Please note there is a regular and intrinsic requirement to communicate in English with members of the public where you will be an effective communicator to a range of customers and clients.

You will spend time working remotely or communicating online where organisational skills and self-motivation are essential. You will need to be flexible and able to prioritise your work.

For more information on the Responsibilities of the role, Key Skills, Qualifications and/or Experience required, please refer to the Job Description attached.

About You

To succeed in this role, you will need a deep knowledge of child development from birth to age 5, understanding the expectations of children moving into Reception in school and understanding children’s development within the early years. For example, this could be integrated working at all levels, promoting positive relationships with all partners, and removing barriers which could impact the current or future service provided to families or children.

We are looking for someone who thrives leading others, who can challenge where required, and who can persuade others to undertake appropriate courses of action.

Please refer to the key skills in your cover letter as these will be used for shortlisting criteria.

Key Skills:

1. Ability to research, analyse and interpret information to make effective and robust judgements, and write reports which plan long term policy and business implications, set timescales, and make articulate recommendations, taking account of the broader impacts. Ability to write sound and robust strategic policies and processes, which are both viable and practicable and meet legislative and business needs, including working with colleagues and partners to agree policy detail and gain appropriate approvals.
2. Excellent communication skills with the ability to influence the actions of others and communicate information which may be complex and contentious. This includes the ability to undertake facilitation of issues in group settings, gain engagement / buy-in and agreement from others by successfully convincing them of the need to adopt appropriate policies and/or courses of action.
3. Ability to lead, manage and motivate a team to achieve agreed goals in the service delivery plan as well as the ability to support the team through change.
4. Ability to anticipate problems, plan solutions and make sound pragmatic problem-solving decisions which will have a significant impact for a service or the organisation, particularly in relation to capacity, capability, flexibility and engagement.
5. Ability to think laterally and to adapt to changing situations in a measured and flexible manner to adapt the advice and guidance provided to suit any change in circumstance whether legislative, structural, partnership related etc.
6. Ability to apply project management principles and practices to small projects, using sound IT skills to analyse data, produce reports and monitor impact.

Qualifications and/or experience:

• Degree level qualification in a relevant field.
• Qualified Teacher Status with Early Years Specialism or Early Years Teacher status.
• Demonstrable recent experience of leading early years practice in either maintained or non-maintained early years provision or within a local authority.

For a full list of the Qualifications and/or experience required, please refer to the job description.

Benefits

As an employer we recognise that it is our employees that are central to everything we do. We aim to create a supportive and dynamic working environment where employees can achieve their full potential, achieve a healthy work-life balance, and are rewarded for the work they do.

For a full list this can be found at our Rewards and Benefits page.

Upon joining us you will have access to a range of benefits including the following:

Employer Pension Contribution: 15% (this alters per annum on the 1 April each year)

Annual leave: 30 days holiday + Bank Holidays = 38 days

How to Apply

The reference number for this role is CAFHE06472.

For an informal conversation or for further information regarding the role, please contact Katie Crompton (Early Years Strategic Lead) at katie.crompton@westsussex.gov.uk.

To apply, please follow the links below to upload your CV and Cover Letter.

In your cover letter please outline your motivations for applying and explaining the skills and experience you can bring to the role (please refer to the key skills) ensuring that any gaps in employment are covered in your CV.

Please ensure you have saved the job description attached to the main advert on our website as, once the job has closed, you may not have the opportunity to download again.

Safeguarding Statement

We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people, and vulnerable adults.

This post is subject to QTS check, an enhanced DBS check, five years referencing, and an occupational health check.

Equity, inclusion, and accessibility is very important to West Sussex County Council. We welcome and encourage applications from everyone, as this helps us build a diverse and talented workforce, that reflects the communities we serve. We ensure our approach to recruitment is flexible and supportive to enable all applicants to be at their best and to ensure they have the best possible chance of success.

We operate a guaranteed interview scheme for applicants that have a disability, are a veteran or are a care leaver. More information can be found on our application helppage.

If you require any reasonable adjustments to support your application, please contact Natalie Greene, Recruitment Specialist, at Natalie.Greene@westsussex.gov.uk