Team Manager Children in Care

The Team Manager appointed will spend their time supporting social workers and family engagement workers who are supporting Children in Care who live in fostering, residential or semi-independent homes. They will need to remain focused and open to the children and young people's identity and opportunity reunification home to their families, in addition to preparing young people to independence prior to them becoming care leavers. This rare and exciting opportunity for a part time Team manager will allow any experienced manager or an aspiring manager to utilise their social worker skills and core values whilst they support staff to support children and young people in their plans for permanence and to prepare them for young adulthood.
Who are we looking for? We are looking for a social work manager who cares about delivering aspirational parenting to our children. Services for children in care and care leavers go way beyond statutory responsibilities, delivering care at a level where all our children and young people are the best that they can possibly be, where they are engaged in all aspects of their care and are not only cared for, but know they are cared about. Ofsted also observed: 'Practitioners are supported by energetic and responsive frontline managers who maintain clear, confident and close oversight of children's progress'. We are looking for someone to join this team to ensure good performance and support is provided to children in care as their Corporate Parent. The service enthusiastically engages in the corporate parenting community in delivering services which truly meet the needs of all our Ofsted rating: Good for Children in Care and Care leavers with Outstanding Leadership.
June 2023. children in care and care leavers. Advocacy and participation are central to the service's core values. We are looking for a team manager who cares passionately about children in care and care leavers and who will continue to build a service where permanence, acceptance and lasting, trusting relationships matter.
Come Join Us Southampton City Council and its partners have made a collective commitment to run well managed services, ensure manageable workloads for social workers, provide high levels of support and expert guidance to help with complex situations. We would like to warmly welcome those who live in or near to the city, and those who are looking to relocate to the area. We are committed to equal opportunities and welcome a broad diversity of talent to apply.
This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions. A social work qualification and Social Work England Registration is essential for this post.

Ofsted rating: Good for Children in Care and Care leavers with Outstanding Leadership. June 2023.

We are the difference for Children in Care and Care Leavers. Practice Manager Opportunity in Southampton.
Southampton City Council, Pathways Through Care Team is a service passionate and striving to achieve the best outcomes for our children we care for. Building relationships that enable our children to feel and know that they are held in mind is important to us. Working closely with partner agencies to provide high challenge and high support, building strong relationships between practitioners and their families, enabling systemic and reflective work with our children and their networks alongside these strong relationships is also a priority. Further to a service re-design, an opening has become available that offers strong developmental opportunities for experienced and or aspirational managers who thrive on helping staff and children to be the best they can be.
The vacancy within this part of the service will be your opportunity to help support social workers to build meaningful and influential relationships with the children we care for. Our service offers strong and resilient practitioners alongside supportive and flexible management enabling you to make decisions, drive plans and change lives for our children making you remember the real reasons you came into social work. In June 2023, Ofsted saw strong evidence that: "The experiences and progress of children in care are good. Improvements to the quality of support provided to children in care have accelerated recently. Careful and successful workforce recruitment, a comprehensive strategy to improve children's placement stability and an impressive level of meaningful engagement by senior leaders with children in care all provide a firm foundation for further improvements". Whilst permanence is at the forefront for all of our Children In Care, there is a robust review mechanism to ensure
that we are providing stability to children and always achieving the right permanence for them. Family is important, and alongside ensuring permanence whilst in our care is the ongoing focus for us to ensure that we have the right plan for your children and that we promote identity and sense of belonging wherever possible. Whilst making strong and memorable relationships, this service also gives creative and restorative practitioners other opportunities to make the difference and to utilise their strong assessment skills in working with birth families to always consider whether the right permanence is in place for our children. There are strong reunification drivers that help support children and young people to recognise their potential and make stronger links with immediate and extended family members as well as significant others in their lives. Southampton are strongly invested in development of their staff and the service re-design focuses on a gradient development with
senior social workers in post and assistant team managers.
The Service
The Children In Care Team supports children and young people who are looked after in foster care, cared for by connected carers or family, and specialist care which includes residential or semi-independent provisions. Within the same service are managers who support Personal Advisors and our care leavers. We share the same office space and the relationship between the two service areas is interactive and enables the journey to independence to be streamlined and young person focused. Young people ageing towards their 18th birthday are allocated Personal Advisors and there is strong focus on joint working in the last 12 to 18 months of a young person's time in our care. The service benefits from a permanent management team who have a wide range of experience from different service areas as well as two service managers who are visible and approachable. There are 5 teams within the one service - 2 of which are for young people who are care experienced, 1 team
is specifically working with unaccompanied children in the UK and two other teams with respective managers where they support social workers who work with our children in care under the age of 18. There is also a Staying Connected Team which provides floating support to young people over 18 in accommodation that we are responsible for. The service prides itself on having a cohesive and friendly feel who offer support to team members. Our service is child focussed and strive for each child or young person to be the best person they can be.