Adolescent Support Team Manager

Role Responsibility

Team: AST West 2 (covering Sevenoaks, Tunbride Wells, Tonbridge and Malling districts

Maternity cover for up to 10 months.

Do you recognise Adolescence as a difficult time? Do you have empathy for families of adolescents, who struggle to navigate the changes? Our practitioners need to be resilient and persistent; be solution-focussed; look past challenging behaviours; build positive relationships with adolescents and their carers, and to inspire young people to reach their potential.

We’re looking for an outstanding Team Manager who can lead staff to be their best; to meet targets and standards; to go the extra mile for adolescents on the edge of care and facing extra-familial risks. We want a Team Manager who really cares about the Service, about adolescents, and who understands the impact of trauma, and how to respond to contextual harm. 

We offer excellent training in case formulation, contextual safeguarding and trauma-informed approaches. We’re currently offering trauma-informed supervision to practitioners and managers to enhance how we support our workforce.

Our generous recruitment, relocation and retention package is up to £68k in the first year, with a salary in the range of £45,817- £53,395 dependent on skills and experience. 

About the team

AST are a specialist social work team within an Integrated Adolescent Service which includes Youth Justice, Early Help, Inclusion & Attendance and Youth Services.

AST assesses and provides intensive support and interventions to adolescents and their families to manage complex situations including extra familial harm and family conflict. There is an element of child in need, adolescent risk management, looked after child and care leaving work across the case loads.

Your role

As a Team Manager you will lead a team of social workers and social work assistants to provide intensive support; empowering young people and their families to develop effective long-term solutions; to develop positive connections; to sustain relationships and to develop strategies to overcome the risks that adolescents face.

You will work closely with the Service Manager to deliver and improve services for adolescents, with a clear focus on those in need of protection and the provision of high-quality interventions and effective collaboration.

You must have good leadership skills and a proven track record of delivering good outcomes for children and young people. You must demonstrate a breadth of knowledge and experience of statutory work with adolescents and ideally have experience of working within a relationship and strengths-based practice framework.  Above all, you’ll be relentlessly focused on helping adolescents to achieve their best.

Our offer to you

As a result of a transformation programme, we have recently increased staffing capacity.  We have invested heavily in our learning and development offer, providing evidenced-based practice events to enable practitioners to access training specific to adolescents including trauma approaches and case formulation. We have launched a trauma-informed supervision programme for practitioners and team managers, to ensure our staff feel supported to achieve the best outcomes for our young people and families.

We offer an annual leave allowance of 27 to 30 days. You will receive up to £2000 annual car market premium (paid monthly) and £3,000 annual market premium. We offer an excellent local government pension scheme and relocation support can be negotiated for the right candidate, according to criteria.  

This post is subject to an Enhanced Disclosure application to the Disclosure and Barring service and registration as a qualified Social Worker with Social Work England.

This post is considered by KCC to be a customer-facing position. The Council therefore has a statutory duty under Part 7 of the Immigration Act (2016) to ensure that post holders have a command of spoken English/Welsh sufficient for the effective performance of the job requirements. The appropriate standards are set out in the Job Description/Person Specification

Contact Details

For more information about this role please call the Adolescent Service Manager Ruth Bachrach on 03000 410013 or via email Ruth.Bachrach@kent.gov.uk 

About the Company

KCC is committed to building a workforce which reflects the diversity of the county's working residents, encouraging applications from people of all ages, abilities, genders, sexual orientations, ethnic backgrounds and faiths, and aspires to create an inclusive workplace where everyone can be themselves at work.

Please note – if you are interested, please apply as soon as possible as the closing date for this advert may be earlier than stated should a number of suitably qualified candidates apply.