C4EO Brief No 1 (October 2008)

Early Years Sector Specialists

Sector Specialists are professionals drawn from across the children's sector who have an expertise and a track record of achievement in a particular C4EO theme. They will be available on request to help local authorities and their Children's Trust partners to improve outcomes for children and young people locally. The Centre is using Sector Specialists - acknowledging the significant expertise and experience in outcome improvement that already exists within the sector. They are not another field force! Rather, C4EO will accredit these specialists to work as ‘peer mentors'. They will be trained to understand how to use the evidence, collected by C4EO on ‘what works', and the evidence-based tools and approaches that can achieve better outcomes in their particular field of children's services.

Sector Specialists will be available to support colleagues to understand and overcome local challenges that are preventing them from achieving better outcomes for their local populations. It is known that professionals learn most effectively when new knowledge is shared in a range of ways and comes with help to put it into practice. So this one-to-one contact from an expert peer is an important element of the Centre's offer to local authorities and their partner agencies.
 
Two Sector Specialists are being recruited per theme for each of the nine Government Office regions. This makes a total of 18 Sector Specialists for each theme. The Early Years Theme is the first one for which Sector Specialists are being sought. Specialists may come from all parts of the children's sector – health, social care, voluntary sector, youth justice, education and so on. The key competencies required are:

• a recognised expertise in early years work and an appreciation of the challenges involved
• a track record of achieving outcome improvement in early years services locally
• a strategic understanding of the ‘whole system' and the complexity of the early years context

In addition, the Centre is looking for a range of generic skills such as an ability to analyse and diagnose problems; an aptitude for transferring knowledge; and a capacity for helping others develop. Potential recruits will also need the active endorsement of their Director of Children's Services (DCS), Chief Executive or equivalent, who must be prepared to release them from their ‘day job' for an agreed period (backfill funds will be provided).

Sector Specialists will work mainly within their region on time-limited assignments requested by DCSs. The Centre is looking for people who can be released for blocks of time over an 18-month period.

Those who become Sector Specialists will benefit from excellent professional training and development, gain valuable experience in other agencies and, in so doing, develop their knowledge base and skills. People who have worked as peer mentors in this way frequently report that the opportunity was immensely rewarding – as well as career enhancing.

There will also be benefits for those organisations releasing Sector Specialists, including giving their local achievements acknowledgement on a national platform and securing access to support on priorities where they may be doing less well (there is a ‘quid pro quo' element to this approach).

The Centre will ‘capture' the learning generated from the Sector Specialists' assignments and feed this into the knowledge base for that particular theme. This learning may well include examples of local promising practice; new knowledge from implementing change; or practical resources that the Sector Specialists develop while supporting colleagues.

It is hoped that, through this sector-led approach to outcome improvement, the Centre will leave a valuable legacy of 'change agents' working within children's services.

Top