Early Help SEND Practitioner

Early Help SEND Practitioner (PO1) X2

Fixed term contract for a period of 12 months

Starting salary of £39,855 –£42,324 

The closing date for receipt of your applications is 01/06/25, however, interest in these jobs may be high and we therefore reserve the right to close the vacancy early.

We are Newham

We are a vibrant, dynamic, culturally rich East London Borough with a young population and limitless potential. We are a challenging yet rewarding place to work, with the networks in place to enable you to be the best Practitioner that you can be and make a real difference to our children and families. Our social care services were rated to be GOOD overall by Ofsted, with leadership rated as OUTSTANDING, but we have not stopped striving to be better.

We’ve been working tirelessly to establish a Centre of Excellence for Children’s Services through investment, co-production and by continuously developing our 'Circles of Support' practice model; centring on systemic and restorative practice and a specialist support offer for our Practitioners. Ofsted described Newham as having a positive culture of learning and development and we’d love for you to learn and grow with us.

About us

Early Help and Prevention Services in Newham are undergoing a transformation to ensure that we offer timely and dynamic joined up support to children and families. 

Our primary aims are early detection and identification of children and family’s needs, offering ‘the right support at the right time’ to mitigate against escalation of children’s needs and risks by supporting families to avoid crisis through earlier identification, targeted support, safety and contingency planning. 

We adopt the role of Lead Practitioner, offering planned purposeful and focused targeted interventions, our aim being to reduce volume of referrals to child protection services, and in accordance with Newham’s Early help strategy, to improve children's long-term outcomes around health and education, improved emotional wellbeing, ensuring that children and young people can feel safe and thrive in their communities. 

Our transformed targeted Early Help Service will see four newly configured teams, comprising of an Early Help Manager, and a mix of Early Help, and Senior Early Help Practitioners aligned with Newham’s four locality Family Hubs networks.

Family Hub’s provide a range of universal services from conception to 18 years (up to 25 years if young person has additional needs). This is inclusive of a strong start for life offer, supporting child and parent through each developmental stage.

Changes within Early Help will align with wider context of proposed Family Help model and Families First Partnership reforms (March 2025).

We are recruiting to a number of positions in the Early Help space: 

About the Job

We are seeking two experienced Practitioner’s to join a newly created Early Help SEND team. You will be case-holding as Lead Practitioner, required to write qualitative Early Help assessments and family plans, offering families a planned purposeful and focused family led intervention, that builds resilience for parents / carers, and improves education, health and social outcomes for children with a disability and/or additional needs. As Lead Practitioner, you will be required to work collaboratively within a multi-professional team around the family model that adheres to the principles of one family one plan.  

To find out more about the role please download the JD here

For an informal discussion about the posts, please contact Fran Craven at [email protected] and Dawn Henry at [email protected]

You will be notified if your application has been successful, we are aiming to shortlist W/B 02/06/25 and schedule interviews between 09/06/25 and 27/06/25. We thank you for your interest. 

IMPORTANT: If you are an LBN member of staff and applying for this role as a secondment you should note that secondments are subject to the agreement of your current employing service. Please ensure that you inform your line manager of your intention to apply for the post in the first instance.

Additional Information

We are committed to creating an inclusive, anti-racist environment for all. When you apply for a job at Newham, your application is considered on its merits regardless of your age, disability, ethnicity, faith, gender identity or sexual orientation. If you share our vision and values, and you bring the experience and skills we need, that’s all that matters to us.

The London Borough of Newham has important responsibilities for safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults. If you are appointed to a job that involves working with these groups, you may be subject to a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check.

Please attach your supporting statement, explaining in no more than x2 A4 sides why and how you meet the criteria for this role.

We practice anonymised recruitment. Please ensure that you remove all personal information from any documents that you upload.

The personal information we have collected from you will be shared with Cifas who will use it to prevent fraud, other unlawful or dishonest conduct, malpractice, and other seriously improper conduct. If any of these are detected you could be refused certain services or employment. Your personal information will also be used to verify your identity. Further details of how your information will be used by us and Cifas, and your data protection rights, can be found by