Service Manager – Children’s Improvement

In this broad and challenging role, you will make a significant contribution to the Council’s key priority: ‘Creating the best start in life for our children and young people’.  You will help to design and implement change to support our children’s services teams, in continuing to improve our services to ensure the best outcomes for our children and young people.

What will you be doing?

You will work alongside the other Service Managers in Children’s Services and Quality Assurance, Strategic Safeguarding and Commissioning to ensure that vulnerable children are protected from significant harm and to enable the best possible outcome for children across the service.  You will also provide a determined focus to support our progression to an Ofsted judgement of Good and then to Outstanding and then maintaining the necessary standards. 

• It will be your responsibility to design and manage the resources required to maximise the impact and effectiveness of the teams, ensuring you are meeting the organisation’s requirements. You will also ensure continuous improvement of these activities.

• Through developing a deep understanding of the organisation’s requirements and expectations, you will identify and recommend appropriate changes required; and lead on the subsequent implementation.

• It will be important for you to develop clear direction and plans for service areas, as well as formulating and implementing targets and objectives bases on the Council’s overall strategic directives, improvement and service plans.

• You will be expected to prepare and present operational reports and information to enable senior management and Council Members to make informed decisions. You will also provide recommendations on specific issues.

We recognise this is a big role with exciting challenges.  This is your opportunity to utilise your full career experience; from being a social work practitioner through to the experiences you have gained through management.

We need someone who isn’t happy to maintain the status quo; we’re encouraging innovators of change and continuous improvement to take on this opportunity.

• You will have a recognised and relevant professional social work qualification e.g. DipSW, CQSW, CSS.   Registered with Social Work England (SWE).
• You will manage 2 Improvement Partners and direct their work in line with organisational need.
• You will have excellent leadership skills and use these to inspire, celebrating success and recognising good work, motivating, and ensuring development of the teams to enable excellent performance.
• You will be able to understand the organisation’s requirements and expectations of the service, quickly assess and respond to changing pressures and requirements, set clear goals and priorities across the service, and put strategies in place to achieve these.
• You will be skilled at communication and building alliances and networks with partners and communities, and be able to negotiate, influence and work in a collaborative way to achieve shared objectives.

Please note that due to the nature of this role it is a requirement of employment that an enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check is obtained for this post.

• What’s special here is the strength of the team ethos. We are a relatively small local authority, so managers know staff well. They can plan their services to ensure teams have manageable caseloads and have effective supervision so feel supported to make decisions which are right for the children and young people they work with.

• We invest in the careers of our people and we are recognised for the quality, breadth and depth of our training and development offer, which helps our people make the greatest long-term difference in their work.

• We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the safety and welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults. Ensuring all our staff are given right skills, knowledge and support to recognise and respond effectively to potential abuse or neglect.

• We recognise that our diverse team of skilled and dedicated people make us a great place to work. We welcome applications from everyone and ensure that individuals are selected, promoted, and developed on the basis of their merits and abilities. 

Our teams at South Gloucestershire Council are making a real difference to the lives of people who live, work and learn here. 

• We're building and shaping communities which people are proud of.

• We're working with the most vulnerable in our community to help them achieve what they want in life 

We’re making a difference, be part of it!