Alison Booth36 Elliott Avenue, Ruislip HA4 9LZ

020 8869 9220 07889 204802Alisonb1@tiscali.co.uk

Consultant with over 10 years’ experience of strategic leadership, development, coaching and line management of an Early Years Education Service in the public

sector and improved Ofsted judgements in Children’s Centres

Won a national Award for partnership work in transforming management training for childcarers.

Service received 3 Team and 9 individual staff excellence awards in 3 years.

Key areas of experience

Policy and Strategy (Education sector)

Led the development and formation of policy areas, such as a 5 year early years strategy across a West London Borough (500+ chilminders and 120+ nurseries/playgroups)

Led the transformation of public funding for nursery places Set the agenda and chaired key strategic early years governance groups across the

health, private, maintained and voluntary early years sectors Ensured that early years strategy was embedded across the organisation and in

partner organisations and strategies

Service Improvement

Transformed Ofsted ‘inadequate’ Children’s Centre and led Children’s Centre to Ofsted judgement of ‘good’ under the April 2013 framework

Achieved service improvements in 3 nurseries to ‘outstanding’ Ofsted judgements Managed the establishment of 4 x new Children’s Centres Extensive experience of restructuring services and change management

People management and development

20 years’ experience of direct line management of people and resources including performance management, taking staff through the capability process and managing attendance of underperforming staff

Experience of recruiting professionals from a range of professional backgrounds Led training and development events for staff of 33 Successfully coached middle managers to improve performance and identify new

opportunities Formulated training strategy and determined subsidy funding levels for early years

training

Financial management

Managed and monitored a revenue budget of £6.8m and a capital budget of £1.2m Established financial management systems to ensure sustainability of income-

generating services

External Funding

Experience of writing external funding bids Had overall responsibility for the financial monitoring of projects, impact and

evaluation measures Experience of establishing grants programmes, reporting and monitoring of outcomes

for families and young children

Career History

2014 – Present Independent Consultant – Children's Centre Manager (L B Barnet)

Leadership of a Children’s Centre in deprived area in line with LBB Performance Management framework. Re-shaping of services to better meet local need and support the EYFSP narrowing the attainment gap agenda. Managing Centre through change and process of Early Years Review. Implementing LBB Healthy Children's Centre standards.

2013 - 2014 Children’s Centre Manager (L B Barnet)

Quality management and improvement of Children’s Centres in deprived area. Led staff team through change and set up process, systems and frameworks to align practice to Ofsted Inspection framework. Achieved Good when inspected (Dec 2103) and on path to outstanding Centre.

2011-2013 Independent Consultant

Consultancy in an under-performing Children’s Centre. Introduced quality improvement strategies across the Centre including managing theearly years provision to meet LA quality standards for funding, consulting with users and non-users, reform of Centre service offer, introducing strategies for narrowing the gap.

1991 – 2011 L B Hillingdon - Education and Children’s Service Dept

2001-2011 Childcare and Early Years Service Manger

Responsible for strategy, policy, monitoring and improving the quality of early years education and childcare across L B Hillingdon comprising over 500 private childcare organisations and 60 School nursery classes.

1999-2001 Families Information Service Manager

Established a childcare information service for 24,000 parents/carers in the Borough. This involved setting up a database, staff recruitment, establishing processes and systems in addition to designing, sourcing and establishing distribution systems for a range of electronic and paper media.

1992-1999 Senior Management Information Systems Officer

Led a team responsible for establishing and maintaining the Education Pupil database and transforming the administration of free school meals and uniform grants.

1991-1991 Admin Team Leader

Led a team responsible for servicing a number of education middle managers. Tasks included a range of administrative functions including minuting meetings, word processing legal documents, diary management etc.

Qualifications – Grammar school educated

Diploma in Management StudiesDiploma in CounsellingDiploma in Psychology

GCE ‘A’ Levels (3) Economics, English Literature, Government and Politics

GCE ‘O’ Levels (8) English, Maths, French, Economics, Biology, Geography, Music, Social Economics

Recent courses (2013)

Supervising staff and avoiding dangerous practice

Safer recruitment trainedLessons from serious case reviewsManaging allegations against staffCAF thresholds and introduction to the Multi- -agency safeguarding hubThe role of the Lead ProfessionalChild Protection for Staff with Designated Responsibility