Senior Operational Leader (Grade 7) in Child Maintenance Service, part of DWP Operations

The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) is a directorate within DWP that helps separated parents by encouraging and supporting them to make private financial arrangement and providing a statutory maintenance service where this is not possible for their children, including taking legal enforcement action to collect money when appropriate. Our service is provided by over 4,000 colleagues, across 8 locations, supporting 900,000 children by arranging and collecting over £1.2 Billion in maintenance annually. Our mission is simple, 'Get money to children' to support their life chances, and help to lift out of poverty. This is an exciting and unique opportunity to join as a senior leader of the Arrears and Enforcement segment within CMS. The Enforcement teams have responsibility for ensuring parents pay and receive the correct amount of Child Maintenance, and in cases of non-payment use all our legislative powers to gain compliance; this includes deduction from earnings, sale of property, enforcement agent collections, confiscation of driving licenses, passports or imprisonment. Enforcement senior leaders have responsibility for:

• Delivering outstanding service to our customers and getting money to children.
• Delivering cross cutting objectives within Enforcement and collaborative working with Arrears leaders.
• Identifying policy and legislation changes where gaps are identified.
• Delivering efficiently and transform the way we deliver our services to reduce costs and increase operational efficiency.
• Engaging in policy change and briefings with Senior Civil Servants and Ministers.
CMS is a great place to work where the leadership team are passionate about attracting the best talent whilst nurturing and valuing new and existing colleagues to be the best they can be. We are looking for people who can demonstrate our values and commitment to leadership which are based around collaboration, resilience and inclusivity. We want you to be comfortable challenging the norm and finding daring and dynamic solutions that support our values and enable colleagues to shine in whatever role they do.,
• The Senior Operational Leader within CMS Enforcement leads a large, complex and geographically dispersed team of up to 250 caseworkers, across 5 sites in England, requiring strong and confident leadership, and must have the ability to translate departmental and directorate strategy into action, as well as demonstrating a passion for building high performing and inclusive teams that are empowered to succeed.
• The successful candidate will model strong leadership behaviours, helping everyone to understand the vision and direction of CMS, translating strategy into operational service delivery, inspiring and engaging our people to adopt shared aims, celebrate success, and help make CMS a great place to work.
• The successful candidate will enable everyone to feel valued, included and able to thrive; as well as co-ordinating the development of external relationships to deliver the best possible service for our colleagues and customers.
• The post holder will be an active and visible member of the national Enforcement senior leadership team, contributing to the wider departmental agenda of ensuring money is paid for children and that both paying and receiving parents receive good customer experience. The post holder will encourage collaborative working between teams, directorates, and stakeholders to drive innovation and service improvements whilst ensuring teams work within budget and headcount control costs, delivering value for money and efficiencies.
• The successful candidate will need to be adaptive and creative, regularly applying this to complex problems and uncommon situations; departing from established patterns to drive greater innovation and achieve higher organisational performance. This could include considering new or revised policy options, resolving complex HR casework, devising means of implementing new regulations, or planning and overseeing the management of projects through to completion, within set budgets and time-limits.
• Candidates should note this role requires frequent travel to other CMS sites, including overnight stays where required. Applicants must be flexible with their working pattern and be able to manage overnight stays or early starts whenever operationally required to do so. Part-time working hours can be requested but not guaranteed.
  
  The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) touches the lives of every citizen in our country at some point. As the UK government's largest public service provider, we support people into work, help disabled people live more independent lives, improve housing and tackle homelessness, provide the financial foundation for a secure old age through the State Pension, and ensure children of separated parents have more opportunity to fulfil their potential through a better child maintenance system. We are passionate about making a sustainable and positive impact to people's lives every day by providing a modern, fair, and affordable welfare system. We seek to be an exemplar of the Modern Civil Service so that we can better deliver for citizens and meet the challenges of tomorrow.