Public Health Officer - Healthy Early Years Coordinator

About the role

Are you passionate about giving every child the best start in life?

Are you looking to work in an area where you can make an impact improving health and wellbeing in early years settings across North Northamptonshire?

We are looking to recruit a Public Health Officer – Healthy Early Years Coordinator on a 12 month fixed term contract to join our friendly and forward thinking Public Health team at North Northamptonshire Council. This is an exciting opportunity to play a central role in promoting the health and wellbeing of our youngest residents and their families.

Working within a dynamic, knowledgeable and supportive team, you will lead and coordinate key public health initiatives across the early years system helping to embed evidence based practice, reduce health inequalities, and strengthen the foundations for lifelong health.

In this varied and rewarding role, you will:

• Act as a key point of contact for early years settings, supporting them to deliver high quality health promotion and improvement activities.
• Lead the development and implementation of a Healthy Early Years Programme, working collaboratively with partners, settings, professionals, and families.
• Strengthen engagement with early years providers, supporting them to embed health and wellbeing standards.
• Coordinate and deliver training, campaigns, projects and resources that promote physical activity, mental wellbeing, nutrition and other areas of child health.
• Analyse data, intelligence and feedback to improve services, inform planning and drive positive outcomes for children aged 0–5.
• Help shape policy and practice by staying up to date with relevant evidence, guidance, legislation and national priorities.

This role offers a valuable opportunity to influence system wide improvements, build strong partnerships and directly contribute to healthier futures for children across North Northamptonshire.

This post is a fixed term appointment for a 12 month period.

The closing date for this post is Sunday 1st March 2026.

In-person interviews are currently expected to be held during the w/c 9th March 2026.

If you have any further questions about this role, please contact Jessica Neal-Brook, Public Health Practitioner – Children and Young People at Jessica.Neal-Brook@northnorthants.gov.uk

What will you be doing?

Principal Responsibilities

1. Manage key pieces of public health development work, in line with local and national priorities and emerging legislation, to meet Public Health and Wellbeing Service Plans and national and local public health strategy.
2. Provide process redesign expertise to the Public Health team and be accountable for the planning, co-ordination, facilitation and monitoring of public health change or improvement projects; developing capability and capacity to embed service improvement tools and techniques supporting the continuous modernisation and redesign of traditional service.
3. Identify opportunities to improve and/or simplify directorate processes and seek to remedy these through improved processes, compliance or coaching.
4. Represent Public Health within Local Area Partnerships across North Northamptonshire
5. Contribute to project planning within specific public health priority areas, ensuring that a clear and transparent plan is maintained and managed using NNC project management methodology to track progress, in order to maintain control of delivering improved services using cost effective processes.
6. Support health improvement initiatives through engaging clinicians, commissioners and local authority providers in new initiatives to change behaviour, increasing public awareness of risk factors and health promotion.
7. Support health protection planning and the local public health response to
   major incidents, disease outbreaks or other public health incidents.
8. Monitor changing guidance at a national and regional level, bring attention to the public health areas it will impact and tailor the public health programme according to the population need with the aim of reducing health inequalities.
9. To enhance the engagement and delivery of health promotion and health improvement projects related to children and young people (CYP) in the early years.
10. Communicate effectively, develop and maintain strong relationships, with both internal and external stakeholders, especially early years settings, to ensure the successful delivery of key CYP programmes.
11. Analysis of data and intelligence gathered through surveys and audits and production of summary reports which inform and target positive transformation for health and wellbeing of CYP.
12. To support the design and delivery of targeted CYP public health campaigns ensuring quality in the design and delivery and close working with internal and external communication teams and colleagues.
13. To manage an online presence via social media and relevant web pages.
14. Effective engagement with early years settings staff, CYP, parents and carers and services to capture their voice and co-produce services.
15. Act as a key point of contact for settings, contracted services and stakeholders to ensure the creation and seamless delivery of CYP public health programmes and interventions.
16. Oversight and responsibility for the organisation and delivery of training, presentations, development sessions and resources which contribute to education settings implementing health and wellbeing standards.
17. To keep up to date with changes in policies, standard practice, school curriculum and review and strengthen the programme where required.
18. Oversight and responsibility for the development and implementation of a Healthy Early Years Programme and other time-limited projects; guiding professionals in embedding evidence-based interventions, best practice and new innovative responses to need. Ensure multi agency groups and networks across settings and sectors are actively utilised in programme development and delivery.
19. Maintain a county-wide overview of the universal programmes available for early years children, by identifying examples of good practice, sharing and disseminating these practices and fostering supportive networks between education staff.
20. Engage directly with early years children, professionals and parents/carers, to deliver targeted support and guidance on physical activity, mental health, nutrition, and other relevant education. This work is informed by settings need or identified local and strategic priorities to ensure relevance and impact.

About you

Education, Qualifications and Training

Essential Criteria

• Educated to degree level in a relevant discipline or hold a professional qualification at a similar level
• Project Management Experience (or Prince2 Practitioner Level/equivalent)

Desirable Criteria

• A formal qualification in or working towards a Public Health or related discipline

Experience and Knowledge

Essential Criteria

• Extensive experience of working within the early years sector and can demonstrate a secure understanding of the early years system.
• Able to demonstrate a good understanding of NHS and local authority policy, statutory duties and responsibilities.
• Able to demonstrate understanding of public health areas of responsibility and functions.
• Able to demonstrate understanding of public health practice, health promotion and health care evaluation.
• Able to demonstrate knowledge of evidence based public health practice.

• Knowledge and understanding of health inequalities, specifically related to CYP, and the impacts on long term outcomes.

• Proven experience of effective coordination and delivery of CYP programmes and setting wide approaches within early years settings.

• Demonstrable experience of working on multiple projects simultaneously and delivering at pace.

• Developing and facilitating partnership working to ensure an integrated approach to health improvement and promotion for CYP.

• Successful experience of leading a service using the following principles:

  • Delivering against outcomes and creating clear objectives

  • Creating a culture of continuous improvement

  • Awareness of key early years issues related to settings and for the local area

• Ability to maintain up to date knowledge of relevant legislation government policy and evidence-based practice in relation early years settings and interpret and disseminate implications to influence policy development and the delivery of services.

• Practical experience of planning, delivering and evaluating in-service training in education settings.

• Strategic experience of analysing and interpreting data to influence service delivery.

Desirable Criteria

• Experience of full cycle experience of managing projects and leading task and finish groups.

Ability and Skills

Essential Criteria

• Excellent oral and written communication and presentation skills (for a range of audiences from senior management to the media).
• Sensible negotiator with practical expectation of what can be achieved
• Excellent interpersonal and motivational skills with the ability to influence and negotiate.
• Ability for presenting complex information to groups and in a simplified way
• Computer literate
• Able to travel independently to various settings and events across the county. A full UK driving licence is required unless alternative arrangements can be made as a reasonable adjustment for a disability.
• Fluent in English
• Ability to work collaboratively to support cross service and partnership working.

• Self-motivated, proactive and innovative.

• Ability to work as part of a team as well as under own initiative.

• Ability to motivate partners to work together effectively for change, including early years settings, the VCSE and statutory sector.

• Ability to successfully work within a team.

• Ability and skill to challenge, advise and support setting leaders, staff and citizens in a professional and positive way to promote the health and wellbeing of children in the early years.

Desirable Criteria

• The ability to manage and/or work on a number of concurrent projects.
• Able to act independently, with some guidance from line manager.

Equal Opportunities

Ability to demonstrate awareness/understanding of equal opportunities and other people’s behaviour, physical, social and welfare needs.

Additional Factors

Essential Criteria

• Able to demonstrate experience of working in NHS or local government cultures and structures.
• Experience of working with health and/ or social care professionals to deliver service improvement.

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)