Jobs

SALARY £73, 488 - £81,644 PLUS RELOCATION SUPPORT

Closes 26 September 2021

Wanted.  A children’s social work leader, a calm head, an open heart, at ease with complexity, excited by driving improvement and making a difference. 

As a result of significant investment and an ambitious new restructure, we are now looking for our next Assistant Director of Children’s Services to help shape the future of place based working to bring about better outcomes for the young people right across the City of York.

We have recently undergone a restructure and the Directorate of People now includes both Adults and Children’s services. With a brand new leadership team, our focus for the young people of York is to continue to develop our whole life and whole system services, utilising an asset and strengths based approach supporting children both now and in the future by working closely with all our partner organisations, especially in the health and education sectors. We are looking for a passionate leader who is just as ambitious for the young people of York as they are for themselves, with a relentless focus on driving improvements, forming collaborative partnerships and influencing key stakeholders.

As the next Assistant Director of Children’s Services we are looking for a qualified social worker who has previously worked in child protection and who is comfortable dealing with complex cases and managing risk, finding innovative solutions to social care, and who has a focus on continuous performance improvement. We have a history of being a good authority; but with the need to do more to retain that legacy and push further for our children and families. We have made progress and have a great platform to realise our ambition; we provide a very strong early help and early intervention service, we have manageable caseloads, with a relatively small number of looked after children and low child protection numbers. You and your team provide supportive, transparent leadership enabling social work professionals to manage risk and continuously personally develop, with a strong focus on ‘growing our own’ social workers. We have achieved rapid improvement in recent months, with embedded systemic restorative practice, strengths-based approaches and frontline programme. However, we still have a lot more to do and so we would welcome an experienced, strategic leader who can bring new ideas and innovative thinking to the table. Your robust performance and improvement focus, enables you to identify gaps, provide solutions and support your services journey to celebrating positive outcomes for every child. Our supportive and highly capable team stands ready to be led into the next phase of our improvement and change journey by a leader who understands the complex landscape within which we work and who can seize the opportunity to help shape the future of place based working alongside our health colleagues.

About the role

As a pivotal member of the Leadership Team, you will actively contribute to the strategic management of the Council and ensure the success of our corporate aims and objectives.

You will work collaboratively with directorate peers, other council officers, partners in the wider city and region, building strong external relationships to make the most of opportunities for our residents. In essence, you will be responsible for the following:

• For delivering statutory services as required for children in Need or Children in Care
• For the provision of Early Help services to vulnerable children and young people
• For ensuring the Quality Assurance and Performance oversight of Children’s Social Care Services
• For the delivery of Provision for Children in Care, to include Fostering and Adoption services
• For providing a Youth Justice Service for children and young people who offend and to divert and reduce offending behaviour.
• For the Provision of Specialist Disability Services for children and young people.

You will find that the role will provide you with the kind of professional challenge and complexity you will naturally aspire to as an ambitious leader, and your caseload will be manageable. In addition, here in York our size means that we are large enough to provide the rich mix of complexities facing local government, but at the same time we are small enough to enable you to get things done - we are not tied up by bureaucracy and red tape. So this role will provide you with the opportunity to make a significant difference as well as a platform to enhance your career. Given the manageable size of York, yet rich in complexity it provides a real career platform for aspiring Directors of Children’s Service of the future, come and make your mark. Finally, we are an ambitious council striving to deliver outstanding services and you will be welcomed by an experienced and hard-working team.

If you are interested in joining our team and are inspired to lead the next phase of our journey, we look forward to your application. In the meantime, following an initial conversation with our recruitment partners at The Resourcing Solution www.yorkappointments.co.uk/adcs

Key dates

Assessment & Interview dates: wc 18^th October