Lambeth is looking for a highly motivated and influential Service Manager for our Children Looked After Service to help us achieve our vision of making Lambeth one of the best places in the world for children and young people to grow up. n this role, you will play a key leadership role in the delivery of high-quality social care practice to ensure that these outcomes are realised.
As the Service Manager for the Children Looked After Service you will manage 4 mixed teams consisting of social workers and personal advisors supporting children looked after, including unaccompanied asylum-seeking children and care leavers.
You will be responsible for developing and managing a service which will support children in care between the ages of 0 to 18 years of age who are subject to Statutory Looked After arrangements as well as some care leavers up until the age of 25 to make independent decisions as young adults by providing advice, information and guidance.
As the service lead, you will ensure delivery of high quality, inclusive services, responsive to the needs of young people and the wider community, address the safeguarding needs of children and young people, and promote corporate parenting principles across the council.
You will need to be an experienced Service Manager within the area of Children in Care, with a passion to lead and motivate staff to demonstrate best practice. You will have the ability to manage risk and use of multidisciplinary working with partner agencies is essential.
You will be an expert in supporting social workers to be the agents of change and to empower and enable them to spend their time doing good quality, meaningful social work, coproduced and tailored around the needs and issues of each family they work with.
You will need exceptional interpersonal skills, strong data analysis skills to be able to identify issues and address them within your service and be able to successfully develop working relationships with partners to achieve effective and excellent multi-agency working.
You will need to provide leadership for a designated service portfolio and will work to ensure the service is effective and of the highest quality. The Service Manager will manage all aspects of the service’s work, and hold responsibility for the quality of this work, ensuring performance indicators are met and taking budgetary responsibility.
You are expected to demonstrate and role model responses and decisions in the best interests of children, young people and families by using ‘role generosity’ when considering service / team / practitioner remits.
Lambeth promotes Systemic approaches to working with families and communities.
By embedding systemic values in our innovative ‘Children at the Heart of Practice’ framework, we are inspiring, resourcing and enabling social workers to undertake impactful relationship-based practice.
Located in the heart of South London, Lambeth Borough is a vibrant community. Stretching from the dynamic neighbourhood of Streatham in the South to the iconic landmarks of Waterloo in the North, we are proud to be the 9th largest borough in London. Our diversity is our strength, with more than 130 languages spoken, making Lambeth the home of the Windrush generation, London's largest LGBTQ+ community, and a thriving Portuguese-speaking community.
With exceptional schools, lush green spaces including Brockwell Park, cultural gems like the Black Cultural Archives, and world-renowned institutions such as St Thomas's Hospital, Lambeth offers an enriching and dynamic environment. The Civic Centre is just a short walk from the main underground and train station.
“Lambeth – a borough with social and climate justice at its heart. By harnessing the power and pride of our people and partnerships, we will proactively tackle inequalities so that children and young people can have the best start in life and so everyone can feel safe and thrive in a place of opportunity.”
In Lambeth, we offer our social workers: