Literacy Lead
Fixed Term, Full Time
Up to £52,166 per annum
Location: Chelmsford
Working Style: Anywhere worker
Closing Date: 8th May 2024
Please note this opportunity will be offered as a 12-month fixed-term contract or secondment.
Essex Library Service is seeking a passionate Literacy Lead to champion a vibrant literacy programme across our network of 74 libraries. With a service that reaches nearly 1.5 million residents, our libraries are the beating heart of the community, nurturing literacy in individuals of all ages.
Libraries are a key part of the local community and as such play a role in supporting literacy in preschool children, older children, and adults.
As a dedicated and inspiring literacy lead you are committed to enhancing the lives of Essex residents through developing and championing a plan that delivers a strong literacy offer throughout the library service.
To work with partners, stakeholders, and external groups to ensure best practice, identify additional funding and training opportunities.
You will work with front line teams to ensure that the offer is consistently delivered to a high standard, with appropriate controls, measures and insight that enable the offer to continually evolve to meet residents' needs.
Your Role:
- Develop and deliver a Dynamic Literacy Plan: Lead on a 12-month strategy that breathes life into our libraries, ensuring a rich literacy experience that evolves with our community's needs.
- Collaborate for Success: Work together and network with colleagues, partners and organisations to shape and deliver a literacy offer that supports other services, attracting new audiences and enhancing the library customer experience. Bringing in new services and audiences into libraries to invigorate our spaces and to provide access to literacy for all through partnerships with other organisations that can support family learning and deliver activities in libraries.
- Lead with Excellence: Guide our frontline teams, Literacy Champions, and Community Connectors to deliver this vision consistently across all platforms, from physical libraries to mobile services.
- Empower Through Education: Drive the upskilling of our operational teams, creating a team of literacy champions who are as engaged and proactive as you are.
- Promote and Communicate: Partner with marketing and communications to amplify our message, ensuring that our literacy initiatives reach every corner of Essex.
- Provide evidence: Work with our data and insight team to demonstrate the importance of literacy on families and evidence that documents the impacts of your role within the service.
- Influence and source funding opportunities to support and grow the literacy offer delivered within and by libraries.
- Lead on the Community and Outreach offer from the library service by managing the Outreach and Community team building up connections across the county and delivering a plan of events and activities, reaching parts of the community and levelling up areas to provide access to literacy for all residents of Essex.
Accountabilities
Develop an innovative, creative, and flexible plan that sets out how the literacy offer will evolve across all parts of the library service over 12-24 months.
Work with partners and organisations to shape the plan and to enhance the library customer literacy experience and attract new audiences to the offer.
Work with front line teams and literacy co-ordinators and partners to ensure delivery of the plan is a success. Ensuring the physical offer is represented across every library and the mobile and outreach service, in an engaging and attractive way.
Proactively support the upskilling of the operational and frontline areas of the service to ensure the offer is successful and create a team of literacy champions from across the service who are engaged and proactive in supporting the offer in their locations.
Working with Core customer functions including the insight and data function to ensure strong and consistent frameworks are in place to design, deliver and report on events and activity.
Working closely with marketing and comms to ensure targeted and comprehensive social media and physical promotion of the service, e.g., posters and materials for partners and community outreach services.
Engage with partners, negotiate shared delivery or financial support of the literacy offers.
Ensuring that our commitment to Equality and Diversity is central to library engagement and provision and aligns to wider strategic vision. To address equality of access to library services and to proactively target a wider, more diverse audience.
Specific individual and shared targets and objectives are defined annually within the performance management framework.
Skills, knowledge, and experience
Educated to qualified teacher status (QTS) with a robust knowledge and experience of literacy
Evidence of continuing professional development with knowledge in relevant professional area
Able to engage and work with all age groups including children, adults, families, carers, etc
Ability to work closely with the library leadership team to foster strong close working relationship therefore good communication skills are required.
Experience of working collaboratively with stakeholders, partners and other agencies
Able to demonstrate an enthusiastic approach with a 'can do' attitude to achieve objectives.
Able to evidence ability to plan, shape and deliver information in a clear, concise and easily understood manner to a variety of audiences.
Please note that the job role requires you to be mobile throughout an operational area. Therefore, the post holder will need to have a driving licence and access to a vehicle, or the ability to meet the mobility requirements of the role through other means.
To read more about us please visit: Climate, Environment and Customer Services
Why Essex?
Essex County Council has a location to be proud of. Our 1,300 square miles stretch from Constable Country to the Thames Estuary, from the dynamic M11 corridor to the traditional seaside resorts of Clacton and Walton. England's oldest town, Colchester, and two of its newest - Basildon and Harlow - are right here. Along with the City of Chelmsford, the county town, they form our major population centres. It means real choice and makes Essex the ideal place for your career. Read more about us here.
Essex County Council is proud to be a Disability Confident Leader. We're committed to interview all disabled applicants who choose to apply under our Job Interview Scheme if they meet the minimum requirements of the job. Please speak to our Recruiters if you require any reasonable adjustments during the process.
We're also committed to interview all veterans and care leavers, who meet the minimum requirements of the role for which they are applying.
What you should do next
If you are interested in finding out more about this role, we would love to hear from you. Please apply via the link.
Essex County Council is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and vulnerable adults, and expects all employees and volunteers to share this commitment.
If you have queries on this role or require anything further, please email resourcing.team@essex.gov.uk
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