Assistant Director: Early Years, Youth & Communities

Help shape a city where every child, young person, family, and community can thrive.

We are looking for an exceptional, values-led senior leader to join Sheffield City Council as Assistant Director: Early Years, Youth & Communities. This is a unique opportunity to make a real difference in one of the UK's best Core Cities and to join a dynamic, child-focused team. Reporting to the Director of Belonging, you will provide strategic, operational, and systems leadership across a significant portfolio of universal, targeted, and statutory services. You will ensure high-quality, inclusive, and integrated support that improves outcomes, strengthens prevention, and reduces inequalities for children, young people, families, and communities across Sheffield.

The role

As a visible member of the Council's senior leadership team, you will:

• Lead Early Years, Youth Services, Community Services, Family Hubs, and locality-based working, ensuring statutory duties are met and services are safe, effective, and responsive.
• Drive citywide improvement in school readiness, Good Level of Development, childcare sufficiency, funded early learning, SEND inclusion, youth participation, and community resilience.
• Build strong partnerships across education, health, safeguarding, the voluntary and community sector, providers, and local communities, creating shared accountability for better outcomes.
• Lead transformation, commissioning, performance improvement, and inspection readiness, using evidence and intelligence to target resources and prove impact.
• Provide effective leadership for a multidisciplinary workforce and substantial revenue and capital budgets, securing value for money while protecting quality and outcomes.
• Advise elected members, chief officers, and partners on strategic priorities, emerging risks, and improvement activity.

About you

You will be an accomplished and politically aware senior leader with a strong record of achievement in a local authority Children's Services environment. You will bring substantial leadership experience across early years, youth, Family Hubs, community services, and SEND/inclusion systems, alongside evidence of delivering measurable improvement for children, young people, and families.

You will have led complex transformation across multidisciplinary services, developed effective partnerships and shared accountability across organisational boundaries, and managed significant budgets and resources in a financially constrained environment. You will combine strategic vision with operational grip, excellent communication, and the credibility to influence elected members, senior officers, partners, providers, communities, and the workforce.

You should be educated to degree level or be able to demonstrate significant equivalent experience, and hold a recognised management qualification, such as a postgraduate certificate in Leadership and Management or an equivalent Level 7 qualification.

Our values

• People are at the heart of what we do.
• Openness and honesty are important to us.
• Together we get things done.

Safer recruitment and political restriction

This role requires an enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check.

This is a politically restricted post. The successful candidate will be subject to the statutory restrictions that apply to politically restricted local government posts.

Sheffield City Council is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people, and adults. We welcome applications from people who share this commitment and can provide inclusive, accountable, and ambitious leadership for our city.

How to apply

Please submit your application, demonstrating how your knowledge, experience, and leadership approach meet the essential requirements set out in the person specification.

Join us and help lead the next chapter for Early Years, Youth and Communities in Sheffield.

Interview Date: Friday 4th December 2026

We are investing in our workforce and are promoting opportunities to our under-represented groups. We value equality, diversity and inclusion and are focused on increasing the diversity of our workforce, particularly the number of Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic, Disabled and LGBTQ+ people, so that our teams reflect the communities in the city we serve. We are also supporting staff with unpaid caring responsibilities to work flexibly.

It is a great time to join us and we welcome your application.

Under the Guaranteed Interview scheme, applicants who are disabled, care leavers, or armed forces veterans will be guaranteed an interview if they meet the essential criteria and indicate their eligibility on the application form. Sometimes, if lots of people apply, we might not be able to interview everyone who qualifies for the Guarantee. In these cases, we'll interview the candidates who best meet the essential criteria for the job.

Full-time employees work 37 hours for 52 weeks of the year and we offer a generous holiday entitlement. We are open to discussions about a wide range of flexible working opportunities which benefit you and the Council, including reduced hour contracts, working part time or as a job share.

If you are appointed to this role, your starting salary will be at the bottom of the grade. If you provide payslip evidence that your basic pay is greater than the bottom of the grade, we will consider starting you at the point of minimum advantage within the grade.

Equality of pay is extremely important to us. All roles at Sheffield City Council are going through an evaluation process which may result in changes to some pay arrangements from 2026. Read about the new job evaluation process to be introduced at Sheffield City Council.

We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of all individuals, ensuring a safe and supportive environment for everyone and where appropriate to the role the successful applicant will be required to undertake relevant safeguarding checks.