Team Managers play a key role in our Circles of Support by ensuring that our social workers feel supported and that high quality practice is delivered to children and families. Team Managers are expected to show strong but compassionate leadership and create a secure team environment of open discussion/challenge whilst allowing systemic practice to flourish.
Reporting to a Service Manager, Team Managers in Assessment lead teams of 6-7 social workers and are supported by an Assistant Team Manager and are on duty only 1 in 6 weeks. Our managers are only expected on site at Newham Dockside 1 day per week.
In the Assessment service you will provide holistic support for your team, understanding the importance of supported learning, development and ambition, as well as staff wellbeing. With this in mind, in the Assessment Service we recognise the rewards as well as the challenges that the nature of the work brings. We have a bespoke offer through our very own clinical service and support to social work teams is provided following duty week through our ‘Duty Debrief’ meeting. Our embedded systemic family psychotherapist facilitates group discussion and the processing of the duty week experience, and it is an opportunity to share observations among the team, to identify and address challenges, and support colleagues.
You are a qualified social worker and registered with Social Work England and have management experience in an Assessment focused service.
We're looking for resilient, experienced Team Managers who are passionate about improving children and young people’s lives. You pride yourself on supporting and developing people and practice, approaching management with energy and enthusiasm whilst always finding time to lend a sympathetic ear to the social workers in your team. You are an experienced systemic practitioner who takes a creative but pragmatic approach to practice, encouraging high standards in others for the residents that we serve. You’re happiest assisting and inspiring your team towards achieving their goals, stepping in where needed to achieve positive outcomes for our children and their families. You already embrace our people-focused values and want to be an active part of Newham Circles of Support. You’re not afraid of change. You want a career defining role.
You have experience and an understanding of working within a diverse, urban community; and share our ambition and energy in embracing new ways of working. You have high working standards and are conscious of the importance of professional development for yourself and your team. You are always open to learning and to helping others learn so that children and families can benefit from our best practice.
We’re looking for Managers who have a genuine interest in a restorative, relationship based practice model drawing on systemic thinking to inform your approach to building effective relationships with children, families and communities.
We’re a vibrant, dynamic, culturally rich London Borough with a young population and limitless potential. We’re a challenging yet rewarding place for social work practise to flourish and we are steadfastly committed to our workforce being representative of the families that we work with. We are taking coordinated, meaningful and focused action to develop an inclusive culture because we believe this is at the heart of enabling diversity in all respects, including diversity of thought. We are taking positive actions to challenge all forms of discrimination and injustice to help make Newham a fairer and more equitable place for children and families to live, learn and thrive.
We’re building a fairer Newham through investment, co-production and by continuously developing our 'Circles of Support' practice model; centring on systemic and restorative practice and a specialist support offer for our practitioners. Ofsted described Newham as having a positive culture of learning and development and we always try to develop talent in-house. We promoted 30 internal colleagues in 2023 alone, and have put more than 47 practitioners through further education since 2020. We value your development and at Newham career progression is a reality for many of our colleagues.
We understand that social work can be a challenging yet ultimately very rewarding profession that makes demands of you personally and professionally. In Newham we value your wellbeing and we aim to ensure that you have a better work/life balance through a remote working offer when you are not visiting children and families, a modern office space for when you’re on site, a flexible working policy where all requests are considered, and a clinical offer to support you to do your best work.
We’ve been working hard to make Newham a great place to practise social work:
