About the role
We are looking to appoint an Early Support Advisor to work in the Early Years SEND team.
The Early Years SEND team promotes high quality inclusive practice across the Early Year’s sector. The team provides a comprehensive SEND offer and supports childcare providers in Cambridgeshire to work with children with Special Educational Needs or Disabilities. The Early Years SEND team manage the Early Support pathway which is a multi-disciplinary approach to meeting the individual needs of children who have a disability or significant and complex additional needs.
This is an exciting opportunity to be part of a small friendly team, and your role would be to liaise regularly with families and relevant professionals to provide advice and support to professionals when making a referral to Early Support to achieve the best possible outcomes for both children and families in Cambridgeshire. You will provide in person advice to families to help them support their child and decide if a referral to the Early Support Pathway is appropriate
What will you be doing?
You will provide high quality advice and support around individual children who are on the Early Support Pathway and monitor, track and evaluate the Early Support journey for individual children and their families. You will be triaging referrals to the Pathway to ensure all the information required is needed and presenting cases at our Multi Agency Meeting.
About you
The successful candidate will have significant experience, skills and a passion for working with children and their families in the early years with SEND. You will have an understanding of the Early Years Statutory framework and how the SEND Code of Practice relates to early years. You will have excellent interpersonal skills combined with the ability to represent the Service in a positive and professional manner, including communicating with a wide range of internal and external customers. You must have strong problem-solving skills and the ability to take a hands-on role and work independently. You will ideally have good working knowledge of Windows & Microsoft packages (although training can be provided).
This role would suit someone who has extensive experience meeting the needs of children with a wide range of special educational needs and disabilities who is working within or supporting the early years sector.
For more details, please see the job description and person specification. If you would like to discuss the role in more detail, please contact Chris Barton: chris.barton@cambridgeshire.gov.uk
The closing date for applications is Friday 1 May 2026 and interviews are scheduled for the week commencing 11 May 2026.
Our benefits
We value our colleagues in Cambridgeshire County Council and have developed a number of benefits in addition to the basics like annual leave, sick pay, pension and mileage…
- A comprehensive wellbeing package to cover all aspects of wellbeing, both in and out of work, which can also be accessed by your family
- Buy up to 4 weeks additional annual leave (pro-rata) through our salary sacrifice scheme
- Take your bank holidays flexibly to better suit your personal circumstances
- Make Additional Voluntary Contributions (Shared AVCs) to your pension with tax and National Insurance savings
- Access to development opportunities, apprenticeships and qualified coaches to support your personal and professional growth
- Paid volunteering hours each year so you can make a positive impact on our community during your normal working day
- Access to Peer Support Groups through our IDEAL staff equality, diversity and inclusion network
- Opportunities to nominate and receive Employee Recognition Awards
- An Our Cambs Rewards account, giving you access to in-store and online discounts as well as our Car Lease and Cycle to Work schemes
Take a look at our Employment Benefits Brochure attached to this advert to find out more.
About us
Cambridgeshire is a great place to work and live with a diverse population, an urban centre in Cambridge, historic Isle of Ely, Huntingdon and St Ives as well as more rural landscapes.
Our four values are central to our culture, driving everything we do.
We are proud to serve the diverse communities of Cambridgeshire and want our workforce to be reflective of this diversity, which we firmly believe benefits our colleagues, the organisation and our communities. If you don’t meet every single requirement in the job role but think this could be you, please don’t be put off. We are committed to building a workplace that is compassionate and inclusive as well as diverse, so if you think you could be a good candidate for this role please consider applying and speak to the recruiting manager if you have any questions.
Our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy, along with our employee network 'IDEAL' and self-organised peer support groups help us to foster an inclusive, supportive and safe working environment where people feel valued, respected, and empowered. We collect relevant diversity data for monitoring as part of the recruitment process to understand the diversity of our applicants and monitor any trends throughout the recruitment processes so that we can take meaningful action.
We are proud to be a Disability Confident Leader. We fully support providing reasonable adjustments throughout our recruitment process, as well as when you join us, and we encourage candidates to contact the Hiring Manager, whose details can be found in the advert, to discuss any adjustment needs. Through a Guaranteed Interview Scheme, we will offer an interview to all applicants who disclose a disability and meet the essential criteria for a job vacancy. On your application form you can indicate you are disabled. Some examples of reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process could include additional time to complete an assessment or printing a document on pastel coloured paper with larger font size and line spacing. We would value talking about what might be possible to enable you to join us and thrive, so if there is something that would help you to do your best during your journey with us, please get in touch.
Visit our jobs and careers section to find out more about our wide range of learning and development opportunities; apprenticeships; our wellbeing package; staff benefits; our commitment to equality, diversity and Inclusion.
Attached documents
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