Principal Policy Officer

**About the Department**:
The Department of Education are dedicated to building an inclusive and diverse workforce that reflects the community and schools we support by treating everyone with respect and dignity. This starts with recruitment and selection. The methods of assessing suitability in the recruitment process may vary. This includes making reasonable adjustments to support applicants at all stages of the process and employee lifecycle.

**About the Role**:
The Internal Reviews team is responsible for state-wide management of the department's child death and serious injuries reviews under the Child Protection Act 1999 and coordinates responses to information requests from the Child Death Review Board, the State Coroner and other government agencies.
The role of the Principal Policy Officer will be to manage multiple child death or serious injury reviews and work as a member of the team and with school and regional staff to ensure the reviews are completed within legislated timeframes and in line with the department's internal review guidelines.
The officer's responsibilities will include, but may not be limited to:

- Gathering extensive information from multiple sources as part of a review or in response to an information request from the Child Death Review Board or State Coroner;
- Analysing the information to identify matters that may require further clarification or exploration;
- Planning and conducting sensitive consultations with school and/or regional staff;
- Drafting detailed case chronologies, internal review reports or responses to requests;
- Analysing information from previous reviews to draft systems papers that draw out learnings from across reviews;
- Managing all documents and data and supporting periodic reporting to regions and executive committees.

**About You**:
The successful applicant will have the following key attributes:

- Excellent written and verbal communication skills;
- Demonstrated ability to gather and critically analyse complex information from multiple sources;
- Ability to build and sustain effective working relationships with staff and external stakeholders;
- Ability to sensitively and professionally manage interactions with school and regional staff including in highly complex situations where multiple staff may be negatively impacted by a child's death or injury;
- Ability to work as part of a high functioning team, meet deadlines and function autonomously;
- Knowledge of or the ability to acquire knowledge of the department and applicable child protection and education legislation, policies and procedures.

Please refer to the attached role description for any mandatory requirements for this position.

**How to Apply**:

- Submit a resume including contact details for 2 referees (one of whom is your current supervisor).
- Submit a maximum 2-page written response outlining your suitability for the role, referring to the About the role section above.

We welcome all applicants to share any support needed to ensure our recruitment process is inclusive.
Applications remain current for 12 months from the closing date and may be considered for appointment to identical or similar vacancies within the Department.
Applications from recruitment agencies will not be accepted.
When working in regulated employment an employee must have a current Working with Children Clearance (blue card) issued by Blue Card Services.
Salary rate shown is reflective of full-time (1.0 FTE).
The Department of Education is a family inclusive workplace. Click here to find out more about our Inclusion and Diversity strategies.This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia License.