The Service & Team:
Mid Cornwall Children and Family Services are seeking an experienced and passionate Service Manager to lead children’s social care services across Family help teams and to work in consultation and collaboration with the Head of Services to support service delivery and development across services in mid Cornwall for children in need of support, help and protection. The Service manager will provide strategic and operational leadership to managers and practitioners, driving high-quality safeguarding practice, service improvement and strong multi-agency partnerships. working. This is an exciting opportunity for a registered social worker with significant leadership experience to make a real difference for children, young people and families in Cornwall through relationship-based, strengths-focused practice.
Service Managers must be a Registered Social Worker with Social Work England and are accountable for ensuring that their service complies with legislation, national minimum standards and associated regulations in service delivery.
The Role:
Service Managers are responsible for developing, supporting and monitoring the professional capabilities of social workers and lead professionals at a strategic level and championing expertise in specialist practice from a position of influence within the organisation.
As a Service Manager you will
This role leads the day-to-day delivery of statutory and non-statutory children’s social care and Family Help services, ensuring that children are safeguarded, supported and enabled to achieve positive outcomes. It provides clear leadership and oversight to Team Managers, promoting high-quality supervision, consistent standards and ongoing professional development across the service. The post holder makes and oversees timely, proportionate and well-informed safeguarding decisions at key points including referral, assessment, escalation and closure, while also driving continuous improvement through audit, performance information, learning and reflective practice. The role champions relationship-based, trauma-informed and strengths-based practice, including effective responses to adolescent risk and extra-familial harm, and strengthens collaborative working with police, health, education and voluntary and community partners. It also plays an active part in implementing children’s social care reform, helping to strengthen Family Help and early intervention in line with national expectations, while contributing to service planning, workforce development, budget management and inspection readiness.
This is a public/customer-facing role, where the statutory English language requirement for public sector workers applies.
This position will be subject to a enhanced criminal record disclosure check.
Working Pattern:
The working pattern 37 hour week and Monday to Friday. Felxible working policies and *Hiring managers please provide information about the working pattern such as hours and days per week. Please also provide information about the flexible working options available in this role, such as compressed hours, term-time only, hybrid work arrangements, and other alternatives.
What you’ll need to succeed:
We are looking for an experienced and values-driven social work leader who brings a recognised social work qualification, registration with Social Work England and significant post-qualification experience in children’s social care. The ideal candidate will have a strong commitment to relationship-based practice and to social justice, equality, diversity and inclusion, alongside a genuine focus on staff wellbeing and workforce development. They will bring proven experience as a Team Manager or Service Manager with responsibility for statutory services, together with a strong track record of leading teams, strengthening performance and improving practice. Just as importantly, they will have in-depth knowledge of children’s legislation, statutory guidance and safeguarding frameworks, as well as experience of effective multi-agency working and partnership leadership. This is an exciting opportunity for someone who is confident in leading change, managing risk and making sound professional judgements, while inspiring others to deliver the very best outcomes for children and families.
Please read the role profile for the full details of this role attached below in this advert
What you’ll get in return:
Cornwall Council’s ambition is to be an employer of choice, a high performing Council and a learning organisation. We commit to providing a reward and benefits package to attract, motivate and reward our employees. We offer a range of flexible working options to our staff. This helps provide our employees with a greater work/life balance. Whilst still ensuring that service needs are met.
Our core employee rewards and benefits include:
- a competitive salary.
- a defined benefit pension scheme, based on your career average earnings. This includes the option for extra voluntary contributions
- a generous annual leave entitlement with the potential to purchase additional leave.
- a national award-winning employee health and wellbeing programme
Employee benefits scheme giving employees access to a wide range of discounts to local and national goods and services
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Additional Information:
Cornwall Council is unable to offer visa sponsorship or transfer existing sponsorship for this role.
We recommend saving a copy of this to refer to if you are invited to an interview.
For more information or an informal chat about the role please contact (*Hiring Manager please provide contact details for queries)
Application Process
Please attach a supporting statement to your application, you can add your Education & Qualifications details manually using the application form timeline or you can upload your CV. Remember to demonstrate why you are suitable against each of the points marked as ‘Application’ on the Role Profile using examples from your experience or transferable skills. This might be through qualifications or descriptive examples from your work / personal experience, which clearly illustrates what you did and the effect it had.
Please note that applications cannot be edited after they have been submitted, please contact [email protected] if you have any queries or require assistance with your application.
Existing employees must apply using their Cornwall Council email address through the Opportunity Marketplace on Oracle.
