Job Introduction
Our Story:
Halton is a vibrant local authority with a rich history and heritage, featuring two iconic bridges that connect communities across the River Mersey. Located in Cheshire, Halton boasts excellent transport links between Liverpool and Manchester, as well as close proximity to both Liverpool John Lennon and Manchester Airports.
Our progressive community strategy aims to bring about meaningful, long-term improvements that enhance lives. It’s an exciting time to join us as we develop new policies and transform the way people access services.
We are immensely proud that when asked what’s great about working for Halton, the most popular response from our workforce has been ‘our colleagues’.
Our Team:
The Best Start for Life Family Hub Team is dedicated to helping children and families in Halton achieve the best possible outcomes. Working collaboratively with partners across health, education, and community services, the team provides early support, advice, and access to services that enable families to thrive. We are passionate about making a positive difference in our communities and ensuring every child has the best start in life.
Hours: 37
Your Contributions:
This is an exciting opportunity to play a key strategic leadership role in shaping the future of services for children, babies and families across Halton. As Service Manager – Strategic Lead for Best Start in Life Family Hubs, you will build on the success of Halton family hubs and lead further development, coordination and delivery of the Best Start in Life programme, ensuring that our Family Hubs provide a high quality, accessible and joined up offer that gives children and families the best possible start in life.
Working closely with the Department for Education (DfE) and key local and regional partners, you will provide strategic leadership across the programme, coordinating key workstreams and ensuring delivery is aligned with national guidance, local priorities and the needs of Halton families. You will oversee associated funding, ensuring resources are effectively managed, provide value for money and deliver against agreed outcomes and DfE requirements.
You will lead the development of strategies, delivery plans, reports and programme updates, providing clear and effective information to senior leaders, governance boards, partnership groups and the DfE. You will monitor progress, performance and outcomes, using data, evidence and feedback to identify opportunities for improvement and demonstrate the impact of the programme. You will also have some operational management duties with some programmes and workstreams.
A key part of the role will be working across health, early years, education, children's services, public health and the voluntary and community sector to strengthen partnership working and ensure families can access an integrated Family Hub offer. You will also ensure that the voices of children, parents and carers are reflected in the design and development of services.
We are looking for an experienced and confident leader with strong programme management, financial, partnership and report writing skills, who can translate national requirements into effective local delivery and influence partners to achieve shared outcomes.
If you are passionate about giving children the best start in life and have the skills and experience to lead a complex, exciting and rewarding programme of work, we would love to hear from you.
Our Offer:
Aside from working with a great team, our employees have access to a fantastic range of benefits, including:
• A generous annual holiday allowance starting at 34 days per year (including bank holidays), increasing with long service
• Membership of our defined benefit, salary-linked Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) with generous employer contributions
• 3 x Salary Life Cover via Local Government Pension Scheme
• Investment in your personal development
• Free Car Parking at HBC sites
• Flexible working arrangements
• Extensive employee benefits platform including discounted shopping, car leasing, gym memberships, wellbeing hub and Employee Assistance Programme
Next Steps:
At Halton Borough Council, we want all of our candidates to feel well-informed so if you would like to have an informal chat about this role, please contact Val Armor Val.Armor@halton.gov.uk - +441515117702.
Interviews are expected to take place week commencing Monday 2nd November 2026.
At Halton Borough Council we want to ensure that our communities are represented across our workforce and a vital part of this is to encourage diversity in all respects. We are committed to making our recruitment practices barrier-free and tailored to best suit the needs and strength of the individual. This includes making adjustments for people with a disability, neurodiversity or with long-term health conditions. If you require accommodations, please reach out during the recruitment process so that we can make this the best possible experience for you – resourcing@halton.gov.uk
Please refer to the attached Job Profile for further information about the role and our values.
We reserve the right to close this vacancy earlier than the specified date should we receive sufficient applications. If you’re interested, please complete your application as early as possible.
We look forward to receiving your application!
Attached documents
