Locality Service Leader
MB2 (£57,553 £65,882)
37 Hours, Full Time
Temporary (until 31/03/26 in first instance)
Hybrid: Stockport Civic Complex and homeworking
Application Deadline: 5 January 2025 11:59pm
Shortlisting Date: 6 January 2025
Interview Date: 13 January 2025
Interview Type: Face to face
Stockport Family is looking for an experienced and dynamic social work leader, to lead a locality of frontline social work teams working with children and families from the point of assessment, through to permanence. You will provide care planning and safeguarding expertise within your locality, making sound decisions to drive excellent outcomes for children and families in Stockport, with a focus on early intervention to prevent escalation of need.
Stockport is a good local authority, with strong corporate and Stockport Family support for the social work role and profession. We recognise that there are local and national challenges in social work, and that strong leadership, culture, and a relentless focus on positive outcomes for children and families is central to success. We are looking for an ambitious social work leader, who is passionate about children and families work, and the profession to join our senior leadership team and support our continuous journey to be better and achieve better outcomes for the residents of Stockport and our workforce.
Your Role
You will provide strong leadership and management of a social work locality within Stockport Family, ensuring that consistently good social work practice and an integrated approach delivers strong outcomes for children, young people and families.
You will line manage a group of social work team leaders, who manage frontline social work teams in your geographical area. These teams work with children and families within a given geography who require a statutory social work response, from the point of assessment, throughout the journey of the child in social work services. This means that you will require a sound knowledge of social work practice, from assessment, child in need, child protection, children in care, through to permanence. You will be the key care planner for children in the locality, supporting social workers and multi-agency professionals to make sound care planning decisions for children with a focus on safeguarding, permanence and achieving positive and sustained outcomes.
You will contribute to a strong and stable senior leadership team in children’s social care and across professional boundaries in Stockport Family and the safeguarding partnership, driving a culture of learning and continuous improvement, and creating a working environment in which social work practice can flourish.
About You
You will be child-centred, restorative and systemic in your approach and be passionate about making a difference for children and families. You will have considerable knowledge and experience in social work with children and families, be a qualified social worker and have experience of leading frontline social work teams.
You will have a sound knowledge of care planning for permanence for children, understand the legislation and practice guidance for statutory social work, and have a strong track record of ensuring high quality practice and performance within teams.
You will be a strong communicator, relational in your approach and be able to demonstrate strong multi-agency partnership working. You will share information and expertise, promote reflection and shared responsibility across a range of services for key decisions that impact on the lives and outcomes of children and families.
You will have a strong sense of good practice, and act as a role model to social workers in your locality, demonstrating ambition for children and modelling high standards of practice. You will have experience of quality assurance, performance management and practice improvement that contributes to a continuous learning environment for social workers that supports their development. You will ensure that practice is responsive to learning and feedback from children, families and key stakeholders.
You will join a fantastic team of experienced, highly motivated colleagues who will fully support you to confidently take on the role. The senior leadership team is strong and stable, with a wealth of experience and expertise in working with children and families within an integrated system.
About Us
At Stockport Council we are one ambitious team on a mission to create opportunities for everyone who lives, works and spends time in the borough. Working at Stockport Council means contributing to one of the most thriving towns in the North. We’re keen to recruit people with the right values and behaviours that can help us ensure our workplace values are at the heart of everything we do.
We are proud to be recognised under the Good Employment Charter as an organisation committed to the wellbeing of our colleagues. As members of the charter, we have been recognised as a great place to work for all colleagues and pledge to pay the real living wage, engage staff in key decisions and endorse fair and flexible working conditions.
Click here to find out more about the Employee Benefits you will receive when you join our team!
If you would like to find out more about the role please contact Vicky Sattler at victoria.sattler@stockport.gov.uk for an informal discussion about the role
The successful applicant’s appointment will be subject to satisfactory pre-employment clearances including a Disclosure and Barring Service check.
Stockport Council holds a Visa sponsorship licence but this can only be used for certain roles and this campaign does not currently qualify.
Please note that we have made a commitment to improve the employment opportunities for people with disabilities, care leavers and ex-military personnel. As part of the Guaranteed Assessment Scheme you will therefore be guaranteed an interview if you meet both the criteria for the scheme and the essential job role criteria.
Find out if you meet the criteria here:
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We want our employees to have a good work life balance and in many job roles we can offer a range of flexible/hybrid working arrangements. We also have inclusive employment policies and staff engagement forums to support our diverse workforce. We will listen to, learn from, and develop our workforce.
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