Team Manager

Role Responsibility

Purpose of the Job:

To deliver and improve services for Children in Need, with a clear focus on those in need of protection and the wider safeguarding agenda through the provision of high quality social work interventions and effective liaison with local partners.

To lead and direct a team of professional Social Workers and/or early intervention staff together with support staff to provide services to children and young people and their families requiring support and/or intervention. Services to be delivered in accordance with legislation, Corporate and Directorate policies and with allocated cash limits.

To be a champion of social work values and delivering interventions that work to keep children safe and to support families.

Main duties and responsibilities:

• Manage a team of professional social work staff and/or early intervention and support staff to provide a service to clients of Children’s Social Services in accordance with legislation, policies and practices.
   
• Develop, enhance and maintain locality specific collaborative working with a broad range of agencies including NHS, Police, LCSP and specialist agencies, ensuring positive outcomes for Young People.
   
• Develop and advise on commissioning strategies by providing an expert view for all Children’s Social Services issues to ensure services are developed and accessible to Children in Need.
   
• Lead and direct the work of a team of professional Social Work and/or early intervention and support staff in order to ensure they effectively fulfill the complex changing demands of the service. Provide day to day support and professional supervision of Social Workers and other staff when required, managing their performance.
   
• Allocate resources and workload across the team to ensure effective delivery of service within allocated cash limit, taking into account local and national priorities.
   
• Recruit, develop and motivate staff groups capable of fulfilling the changing demands of the service, through day to day support and providing for high quality caseload supervision to ensure the ongoing continuous development of staff (where relevant helping employees meet the requirements of their registration) in order to deliver a high quality and consistent service to the locality.
   
• Contribute to the preparation of the team budget. Control, monitor and forecast expenditure, taking remedial action as required to enable cost effective services to be provided within the allocated cash limit.
   
• Contribute to the formulation, monitoring and review of professional practice procedures, strategy and policy through working closely with colleagues in other Divisions and/or via County Working Groups, to maintain high standards of social work practice which meets the changing needs of the service.
   
• Regularly Chair complex child care meetings where serious issues of risk need to be considered or the demands of the service require.
   
• Monitor professional standards within the team in liaison with Senior Practitioners and the Training and Development Team to ensure compliance with all policies and procedures and that Performance Assessment Framework indicators and other agreed targets are met.
   
• Respond to situations of crisis and emergency by co-coordinating service provision with other Directorate colleagues.
   
• Undertake case audits to quality assure file management and standards of practice

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

Eleanor Hays - Elle.hays@kent.gov.uk - 03000 411 938

About the Company

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.