Assistant Director for Family Help
Location: Oldham
Directorate: Children’s Services
Salary: £85,956 - £96,006
Contract: Permanent
Closing date: 12 noon, Friday 11th September 2026
Interview date: Friday 18th September 2026
Lead the next chapter of Family Help in Oldham
Oldham is determined in its mission to achieve the best possible outcomes for its children, young people and families. We are redesigning how we support residents by building a Family Help system that provides timely, purposeful and proportionate support, delivered through an integrated model across all five districts of the Oldham borough.
Building on the successful establishment of our Best Start Family Hubs, we’re committed to ensuring every child in Oldham has the best start in life and the opportunity to thrive. And with the national rollout of the Families First Partnership Programme representing the biggest transformation of children’s social care in a generation, this is a unique and exciting time to join us and help shape the future of family support services.
We are seeking an exceptional Assistant Director for Family Help to lead, shape and strengthen our Family Help services across Oldham. This is a pivotal senior leadership role with the crucial responsibilities of ensuring that children, young people and families receive the right help at the right time, and that our workforce is supported to deliver excellent, child-centred and family-focused practice.
Oldham Council is committed to building a fairer, more inclusive borough that works for everyone, with a focus on improving public services, reducing inequalities and tackling poverty. The Council’s wider priorities include fostering healthier and happier lives, ensuring Oldham is a great place to live, and encouraging green and growing communities. Central to delivering this vision are key pillars of work including prevention and early help, meaning this role plays an essential part in helping the borough as a whole.
About the role
As Assistant Director for Family Help, you will provide strategic and operational leadership across Family Help services, ensuring that support for families is accessible, coordinated, inclusive and effective. You will spearhead a complex system that brings together social work, family support, early help, safeguarding partners, schools, health services, police, voluntary and community organisations, and wider council services to improve outcomes for children and families.
You will be responsible for driving high-quality practice, strengthening thresholds and pathways, improving the experiences of children and families, and ensuring that statutory duties are delivered safely and consistently. You will also play a key role in the wider Children’s Services leadership team, contributing to transformation, improvement, inspection readiness and partnership development.
This is an opportunity to lead with ambition, compassion and professional authority, creating the conditions for practitioners and managers to do their best work with families.
Leadership
You will:
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Provide strategic leadership for Family Help services across Oldham, ensuring clear vision, direction, accountability and impact.
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Strengthen the Family Help operating model, ensuring families receive timely, coordinated and proportionate support.
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Lead high-quality social work and family help practice, with a focus on child-centred assessment, risk analysis, planning, review and outcomes.
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Work collaboratively with safeguarding partners, schools, health services, police, adult services, housing, voluntary sector partners and community organisations.
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Champion relationship-based, systemic, trauma-informed, strengths-based, anti-racist and anti-oppressive practice.
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Use performance data, auditing, feedback, inspection learning and quality assurance to drive continuous improvement.
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Provide visible, inclusive and supportive leadership to managers and practitioners.
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Build strong relationships with elected members, senior leaders, partners and communities.
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Contribute to Oldham’s wider ambitions for prevention, family help, inclusion and improved outcomes for children, young people and families.
About you
We are looking for a senior leader who brings credibility, resilience and a steadfast commitment to achieving the best possible outcomes for children, young people and families.
You will be:
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A suitably qualified leader with substantial senior leadership experience delivering services to children and families.
- Experienced in leading Family Help, early help, safeguarding, statutory social work or related children’s services.
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Confident in managing complexity, risk, performance and service improvement.
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Skilled in building strong partnerships across agencies and communities.
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Able to inspire, support and challenge managers and practitioners.
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Committed to listening to children, families and communities, and using their feedback to improve services.
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Passionate about reducing inequalities, tackling poverty and improving life chances.
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A visible and values-led leader who can bring people together around a shared purpose.
Why Oldham?
Oldham is a borough with strong communities, bold ambitions and a clear commitment to improving outcomes for residents. We are focused on building a fairer and more inclusive borough, improving services, reducing inequalities and ensuring people have the support they need.
With the national rollout of the Families First Programme, we are transforming how support is delivered to children, young people and families through an integrated Family Help model that brings together early help, targeted support and safeguarding services. This role offers a unique opportunity to lead and shape this transformation locally, helping to develop services that put families at the heart of everything we do.
As Assistant Director for Family Help, you will play a pivotal role in driving this ambitious change agenda, building on Oldham's successful Best Start Family Hubs model and strengthening partnerships across agencies and communities. You will join a committed Children's Services leadership team and be able to make a lasting difference to how Family Help services are delivered, ensuring families receive the right support at the right time.
This is a rare opportunity to lead at a time of significant local and national reform, helping to shape the future of Family Help in Oldham and improve outcomes for children, young people and families for generations to come.
About us
We want Oldham to have vibrant, safe neighbourhoods where people are proud to live with opportunities for healthier, more fulfilled lives; and a sustainable, thriving economy. As we look to the future, the challenges may be significant, but so are the opportunities. We’ve identified three missions with our residents and partners, focusing on what will deliver the biggest impact:
A Great Place to Live, Healthier, Happier Lives, and Green and Growing.
We’re looking for candidates who will support us to achieve our ambitions and we encourage you to download our Corporate Plan: Ready for the Future and our Oldham Plan for further information.
Our values and behaviours
By driving innovation, investing in our people, and championing our communities, we will ensure that Oldham continues to be a place where everyone can live their best life. To support this, we have three core values which define who we are and how we operate. These are ‘Proud, Ambitious, and Together’, and they shape our culture, inform our decisions, and inspire us to deliver on our commitments to the people of Oldham.
We have translated these values into five behaviours which guide our actions and are the standards we hold ourselves to, day in and day out:
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Work with a resident focus
- Support local leaders
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Committed to the borough
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Delivery high performance
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Take ownership and drive change
You can find out more about our values and behaviours on our greater.jobs Oldham page
Our benefits package
At Oldham Council we offer a great benefits package for our employees, which includes the following:
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25 days annual leave which increases after 5 and 10-years’ service
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The option to purchase additional annual leave.
- An attractive LGPS benefit pension scheme with the option to make shared cost additional voluntary contributions.
- Discounted gym membership with Oldham Active.
- Staff discount scheme for shopping, entertainment, eating-out, eating-in, travel, motoring and more.
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Salary sacrifice scheme for home and electronics and Cycle to Work.
- Wellbeing support, including a Mental Health First Aider network and an Employment Assistance Programme that provides 24 hours access to advice and support.
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Staff recognition and celebration events.
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Peer support groups
Inclusive recruitment
We work closely with employees to help them work at their best, including making adjustments such as flexible working, describing available working patterns, providing equipment or making changes to the workplace.
We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults and therefore expect all staff and volunteers to share this commitment.
If you have lived or worked abroad for 3 months or more in the last 5 years or 12 months or more (whether continuously or in total) in the last 10 years whilst aged 18 or over, please refer to the link below for details for how to obtain your Certificates of Good Character. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/criminal-records-checks-for-overseas-applicants
Unfortunately, at this time we are not able to offer sponsorship.
If you have completed the GM Elevate (Leadership Development) Programme please indicate this within the ‘About You’ or ‘Supporting Statement’ section of your application.
If you’re an applicant with disabilities and have previously been in or currently in care, a carer, someone who has served in the Armed Forces, or you’ve participated in the GM Elevate Programme, and you meet the essential criteria of the role, you are guaranteed to reach the first stage of assessment under our Guaranteed Assessment Scheme.
Data and privacy
For details of how we use your data please see our Privacy Notice
Important information
Please note that should a vacancy that has been released for internal or external recruitment be deemed suitable for a current employee at risk of redundancy, it can be pulled back at any point, up to the post being formally offered to a candidate who is not at risk of redundancy.
Right to Work in the UK from 1st July 2021.doc
