Service Manager - Family Support & Contextual Safeguarding

Children's Social Care Family Support and Contextual Safeguarding teams provide support services to the city's most vulnerable children subject to Child in Need, Child Protection and Looked After Care Plans.,

• Providing high quality management to our Family Support and Contextual Team Managers to ensure the very highest professional practice.
• Monitoring the performance and implementation of the practice framework to promote the highest levels of practice and across the wider service.
• To be the lead to create and maintain multi-agency working and developing collaborative relationships with partners to ensure that children and young people are supported and safeguarded.
• Responsible for ensuring that Children and Families Assessments, Child In Need, Missing and Exploitation, Child Protection Plans and plans for children who are subject of care proceedings have clear priorities, are of good quality and focus on the child's needs.
• Drive forward the key priorities and values of the service by working in collaboration with the Head of Family Support Services and wider Children's Services Leadership Team.
• Be the lead for contributing to the work of MK Together by ensuring active management participation at task and finish groups, panels and safeguarding boards.
  
  Qualified Social Worker with a valid Social Work England registration, eligible to work in the UK and hold a UK driving licence.
• Minimum of five years post qualifying experience in social work with children and families at risk. This should include extensive management experience.
• Track record of highly effective practice management or supervisory experience is essential.
• Expert knowledge of children's social work, including safeguarding, statutory responsibilities and assessment frameworks.
• Demonstrate excellent organisational skills, a head for complexity, and know how to improve services.
• High level of written and oral communication skills and ability to tailor to a wide range of audiences.
• Experience in strong working relationships with partners and stakeholders including health and police.
• Excellent influencing, negotiating, advocacy skills, including the ability to work with a wide range of stakeholders including children, young people, parents and carers in a multi-disciplinary and multi-agency context at all levels of the organisation.
  
  Milton Keynes City Council is a large, modern and financially stable employer with around 2,500 people working across our eight areas. Together we provide local residents and businesses with a wide range of important round-the-clock services and aim to make our city a better place to live.
We work hard because of the demands placed on us, like protecting children from harm or preventing homelessness. However, working for the city is always rewarding and everyone has the opportunity to make a real difference. We're very proud of our diversity and are committed to having a workforce that reflects the community we serve. Whatever your background, you will be welcome here if you share our values of being dedicated, respectful and collaborative. We offer great training and support and because of the size and scale of the organisation there are always new opportunities to explore when it's time for a new role. If you'd like to know more about how we do things and what matters to us, take a look at our short booklet What makes us Milton Keynes City Council.

Our teams work hard to improve the quality of support offered to children and their families. This is a great opportunity to work alongside our Head of Family Support Services to make a positive difference to children in need. We offer a £4000 market supplement (pro rata), excellent training and career progression opportunities and a suite of IT equipment to enable you to do your job effectively. Support with career progression and access to clinical supervision is provided to all employees. We encourage and warmly welcome applications from social workers in all disciplines such as Adult Social Care and Mental Health Services. Interviews for this role will be held on Monday 27 January., In addition to your salary, we offer a range of benefits including:
• Great holiday benefits - most roles include 28 days annual leave every year on top of public (bank) holidays, increasing to 32 days after five years. In addition, there is a holiday purchase scheme allowing staff to purchase up to 5 additional days of leave each year.
• Excellent pension - everyone who works for us can join the national Local Government Pension Scheme, widely regarded as one of the best available.
• A full range of family friendly policies including enhanced maternity, adoption and paternity support and a childcare subsidy.
• Access to an award-winning employee benefits programme that includes a health cash plan, a low-cost bike purchase scheme as well as high street discounts and money off entertainment and travel.
• Salary sacrifice car scheme - low-cost leasing of electric and low emission vehicles.
• Blue Light Card - employees working within social care can qualify for an additional range of discounts from national retailers and local businesses.
Our roles are either designated 'site based' or 'home based'. 'Site based' roles can include up to two days a week working from home whilst 'home based' roles are based at home four days a week. Of course, managers designate which category roles are in based on the needs of the service and the circumstances.