Team Manager - Leaving Care

Posted 16th Aug, 2023
Location
Newham
Salary/rate
£56,903 – £59,975
Hours
Full-time
Working arrangements
Blended
Contract type
Permanent
Closing date
29th Aug, 2023
About the role

We are currently looking for Team Managers to join our Leaving Care Service. For more information on leading a team in our Leaving Care service please contact Leaving Care Service Manager Deborra John: deborra.john@newham.gov.uk 

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 Leaving Care will lead a team consisting of 4/5 Personal Advisors and a Senior Social Worker.

About you

You are a qualified social worker and registered with Social Work England, with vast experience of working in statutory services for Care Leavers, leading teams, and making key decisions. You are passionate about improving the life chances for looked after children as they move into independent adulthood.

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.

About Newham

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:

  • A commitment to addressing disproportionality wherever we find it.
  • We’re a GOOD local authority focused on reaching excellence.
  • We offer genuinely flexible/hybrid working as long as children and families are supported.
  • Stability: 100% of our Senior Managers and 71% of Team Managers are permanent.
  • Our firmly established practice model, Circles of Support, was recently nominated for the prestigious MJ Award for Innovation in Children’s Services and allows systemic, restorative practice to flourish.
  • Career progression; we promoted 30 internal colleagues in 2023.
  • Social Care Academy – 47 social workers have studied for systemic higher education with us since 2020. Our Academy offer received significant praise from Ofsted.
  • A competitive package for social workers of up to £57,116 (includes market supplement).
  • Oyster card/parking permit for business use.
  • Wellbeing service, leisure and discount benefits (Council scheme).
  • Travel season ticket loan, cycle scheme, Local Authority pension.