Area Manager

**About the Department**

The role of the Department of Education is to support Victorians to build prosperous, socially engaged, happy and healthy lives. It does this by supporting lifelong learning and healthy development, strengthening families and helping to equip people with the skills and knowledge for a 21st century economy and society. The department supports a culture of leadership, learning and renewal in all workplaces with opportunities for career development and advancement.

**About the Division**

The Department of Education is the Victorian Regulatory Authority for early childhood education and care (ECEC) services under delegation from the Secretary. The Quality Assessment and Regulation Division (QARD) in the department regulates and quality assesses Victorian ECEC services. It drives the delivery of high-quality services and ensures the safety, health and wellbeing of Victorian children attending those services.

QARD regulates approximately 4,900 services including family day care, outside school hours care, long day care and kindergarten programs, as required by the Education and Care Services National Law 2010 (National Law). QARD also regulates around 180 services operating under the Victorian Children's Services Act 1996 (Children's Services Act); these include occasional care and limited hours services.

QARD is responsible for:

- approving providers and services as required by the National Law and Children's Services Act
- monitoring service compliance and conducting investigations in response to notifications and complaints
- assessment and rating of family day care, outside school hours care, long day care and kindergarten programs against the National Quality Standard (NQS) for Early Childhood Education and School Age Care
- supporting legislative policy development.

QARD is also the integrated sector regulator of the Child Safe Standards for all early childhood services in Victoria.

**About the Role**

An exciting opportunity exists for a highly skilled senior leader who will be responsible for the management of the Barwon South West Area Team, which comprises authorised officers and support staff who assess and rate services against the NQS, conduct inspections to monitor compliance with regulatory requirements of the National Law, Children's Services Act and the Child Safe Standards, and investigate alleged non-compliances.

The Area Manager will undertake the following functions:

- contribute to and support regional regulatory work based on priorities identified in conjunction with the Regional Manager
- provide high quality leadership, support, mentoring, and coaching to authorised officers within the South West Victoria Region (SWVR) team, in relation to the regulatory functions including monitoring and compliance visits, investigations and assessment and rating
- manage and supervise the Barwon South West team to ensure assessment and rating, compliance and enforcement procedures are applied in accordance with the National Law, Victorian Law and relevant regulations and government policy
- provide employees with the leadership, information and guidance required to achieve outcomes and to ensure that these meet compliance requirements
- monitor team and individual performance and advise Regional Manager of any emerging issues that may need to be addressed
- work across the SWVR and work collaboratively across other regional areas and programs
- engage closely with education and care services and key stakeholders to achieve regulatory outcomes including educative and capacity building activities
- engage with regional colleagues to support the early childhood reform platforms and emergency management.

**This is a full time, ongoing VPS 6 position reporting to the Regional Manager, SWVR and is based in the Geelong or Ballarat office.**

The Barwon South West area forms part of a larger region and as part of the regional leadership team, the Area Manager will be required to travel across the SWVR. This will occasionally include planned overnight stays. Typical work arrangements involve a balance of working offsite independently while visiting ECEC services, with time in an office environment working as part of a bigger inclusive team.

**Attributes**

To be successful in this role, you will have:

- demonstrated people management and leadership skills, including coaching, mentoring and capacity building, to support and create the conditions for a high functioning, productive and engaged team
- high level organisational skills and a proven ability to work independently to make decisions and manage systems, processes and resources to deliver outcomes
- highly developed critical thinking and problem solving skills with the ability to identify innovative and timely and practical solutions to complex problems
- highly developed interpersonal and stakeholder engagement skills, including the ability to influence and negotiate effectively at all levels with a range of internal a