Placement Officer

Job Title: Placement Officer
Salary: £35,570 progressing to £38,510 pa
Hours: 37 hours per week
Location: Farnham House, Stevenage
Contract Type: Permanent
Directorate: Children's Services

About the team

Do you enjoy working in a fast-paced environment? Do you like working creatively to find solutions?

The Brokerage Team within Specialist Services ensures children, young people, carers, and families receive high-quality, timely support tailored to their needs. The team works under the guidance of service heads to assess, manage risk, and facilitate access to appropriate resources.

The team develops, delivers, and reviews services that safeguard vulnerable children, enhance their life chances, and secure high-quality placements with trained and supported carers. Additionally, they oversee the efficient operation of services, ensuring high performance, cost-effectiveness, and alignment with national legislation and guidance.

About the role

This role involves identifying, brokering, and monitoring placements for children and young people based on assessed needs, ensuring services are tailored, cost-effective, and meet high-quality standards. It requires close collaboration with agencies and stakeholders to secure placements that maximize positive outcomes. Additionally, the role contributes to service development by identifying gaps in provision and working with strategic commissioning to expand placement options under the children living away from home commissioning strategy.

Operating in a fast-paced, multi-agency environment—including health, voluntary organizations, local councils, and the independent sector—this position demands strong organizational skills, the ability to work under pressure, and a proactive approach to problem-solving. Responsibilities include overseeing placements for looked-after children, managing the efficient procurement of external placements while monitoring costs, and maintaining systems for assessing and ensuring placement quality through visits, complaint investigations, and provider evaluations. Administrative support, including duty tasks and inbox management, is also required to meet service needs effectively.

About you

Essential Criteria:

• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to assess information, identify solutions, and make informed placement decisions that improve outcomes for children and young people.
• Excellent communication skills, both verbal and written, including managing challenging conversations, de-escalating situations, and producing clear, accurate information.
• Ability to work effectively under pressure, remaining calm, resilient, and solution-focused when responding to urgent or emergency placement requests.
• Strong negotiation, influencing, and stakeholder management skills, with the confidence to challenge constructively and work collaboratively with providers, social workers, managers, and partner agencies.
• Proficiency in using data and ICT systems to research, record, analyse, and communicate information that supports effective decision-making.

Desirable Criteria:

• Skilled in researching and identifying alternative provisions to meet individual needs.
• Experience of working in a complex multi-agency environment including work with health, voluntary and community sector, District and Borough Councils and the independent sector.

We welcome applications from candidates who currently reside in the UK with established proof of right to work documentation. We are not able to offer sponsorship at this time for this role.

This job role is Level 9. Please locate the job profile here:

Job profiles - Health and social care

To hear more about this opportunity please contact Sha-Lee.Worrell@hertfordshire.gov.uk for an informal discussion about the role.

Interview Date: week commencing 30 November

Benefits of working for us

How to apply

As part of your application, please upload your most recent CV. Ensure your CV is up to date with your employment history (including any employment gaps), and including any training/qualifications. We encourage you to include examples of where you have demonstrated the requirements/criteria in the advert / job profile to allow the panel to fully recognise your skills and abilities. You will have the opportunity to include a short covering paragraph within your application to give us a little more information about your skills, knowledge, and experiences.

Additional information

We are changing
Hertfordshire County Council is undergoing Local Government Reorganisation (LGR). If you are employed by Hertfordshire County on 1 April 2028, it is expected that most roles will transfer to the newly-created unitary councils on existing terms and conditions under TUPE (Transfer of Undertakings – Protection of Employment) principles.

LGR is one of the biggest changes we will face in a generation. It will reshape how we work and how services are organised and gives us a real opportunity to build something better. To find out more, visit https://www.hertfordshire-lgr.co.uk/

Disability Confident
We are proud to be a Disability Confident employer and guarantee an interview to anyone disclosing a disability whose application meets the minimum criteria for the post.

Safeguarding
This role has been identified as requiring a Disclosure & Barring Service (DBS) check.

English Fluency
The ability to converse at ease with members of the public and provide advice in accurate spoken English is essential for the post (for those whose language is a signed language the provision of a sign language interpreter who speaks English to the necessary standard of fluency will be required). Further information about the legal requirement can be found here.