Team Manager

Role Responsibility

This is an exciting opportunity to become part of Adoption Partnership South East regional adoption agency and help to make a positive difference for children and families across the south east.

As Panel Team Manager, you will manage, develop and lead a team of Panel Advisers in enabling our agency to deliver the very best child-centred outcome-focused adoption service to looked after children. The Panel Team Manager will need to have experience of managing a team and supervising Social Workers. The Team Manager will be responsible for managing the Panel Team and will line manage the Panel Advisers; providing them with monthly and also ad hoc supervision. 

As part of your role, you will manage Adoption Partnership’s adoption panels, support the Panel Chairs and Members, and provide professional social work expertise as required. You will be responsible for having management oversight of all the cases coming into the Panel Team and ensuring that they are allocated to a Panel Adviser in a timely way. These cases will include children’s adoption plans needing an agency decision, adopter approvals and children’s matches with adopters needing to be presented to panel. The Panel Team Manager will need to ensure that the weekly Adoption Partnership panels are meeting the adoption regulation requirements and are functioning to a high standard. 

As an experienced Social Worker registered with Social Work England, you will have extensive experience of adoption legislation and practices plus children and family’s legal proceedings. You will also be an effective communicator with a high standard of interpersonal skills and ability to deal with a wide range of people. It is also important that you demonstrate awareness and understanding of equal opportunities and other people’s physical, social and cultural needs.

Our children come first. Their needs and wishes, welfare and safety are at the centre of everything we do – and we are dedicated to finding loving, secure and permanent homes that are right for them.

About Us:

Adoption Partnership South East is a new regional adoption agency, delivering adoption services for the London Borough of Bexley, Kent County Council, and Medway Council. Bringing together our expertise, we are committed to achieving the best for all our children across the region. Our agency launched in November 2020.

We are committed to ensuring that children are able to remain in the care of their parents and birth families wherever possible. However, where it is not possible to achieve stability for the child within the birth family, we work to achieve alternative permanent arrangements for the child within a family setting and these include adoption.

The adoption service abides by equal opportunities legislation and the policies of each Partner. The service works positively and respectfully with all service users and partner agencies regardless of race, colour, religion, language, culture, disability, gender, sexual orientation, or age. Every attempt with be made to secure an adoptive family which meets a child’s emotional and developmental needs considering their ethnicity, religion, language, culture, gender, and disability considering the need to avoid undue delay.

Requirements:

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.

For further information about the role responsibilities and selection criteria, please refer to the attached Job Description and Person Specification.

Part Time applicants will also be considered.

Closing date:15th May

Contact Details

For further information or to have an informal conversation regarding the role, please contact Maria Olsson (Service Manager) via Maria.Olsson@Kent.gov.uk or 03000 420508. 

About the Company

Work that works for you and us - let's talk flexibility!

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, faiths and those with caring responsibilities, and aspires to create an inclusive workplace where everyone can be themselves at work.

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