Assistant Director

Our strategic ambition is for every child in family law proceedings to have an exceptional experience, everywhere in the country and every time.

While we are proud that Ofsted judged us to be ‘outstanding’ earlier this year, there is always more to do to serve the best interests of children in public and private law proceedings across England. Our inspection outcome has energised us to keep getting better at what we do for children and families and the feedback from them tells us we are doing just that.

If you are you an experienced and senior operational leader of services for children and families with the energy and commitment to lead a highly effective service, and our ambition for children resonates with you confident you can demonstrate the breadth and depth of experience required for the role of Assistant Director.

Following recent confirmation of our senior operational leadership structure, we are recruiting for an Assistant Directorto leadour services across Tyneside, Northumbria, Durham, Teesside, North Yorkshire, Cumbria and Lancashire.

Key to being part of the leadership team is inspirational, inclusive leadership, a commitment to continuously improve the quality and effectiveness of practice and to do this through developing collaborative partnerships across the family justice system. You will also have a track record as a senior leader in improving the quality and impact of social work practice.

Directly accountable to a Deputy Director of Operations and Improvement, if you join us, you will have a range of responsibilities, and accountabilities, and have close working relationships a range of key internal and external stakeholders, ranging from the Chief Executive, Corporate and Operational Management Teams, as well Central and Local Government agencies.

Within your service areas you will be expected to provide direction and leadership that supports a clear focus on performance and quality and creates a culture of continuous improvement that sustains and stretches our effectiveness.

You will support and lead your management team to manage competing demands while always retaining the strongest focus on children and families. Your direct reports will consist of two Heads of Practice who in turn lead a team of Service Managers.

To be considered for the role of Assistant Director, as well as being a social work qualified senior professional (with current SWE registration), you should have comprehensive relevant experience of working effectively as a member of a senior management team at a level sufficient to make a success of this post. You will also be able to demonstrate:

• Excellent knowledge of best practice in safeguarding, child protection, public or private law for children and current practice in a large children’s social work organisation.
• Strong and recent experience in the quality assurance and oversight of children’s social work practice, particularly in respect of protection and care.
• Ability to develop and implement business and improvement plans that deliver services which meet all KPI‟s and internal targets while remaining focused on children and families’ experiences.
• An ability to operate effectively and sensitively within a political and judicial environment and to develop and maintain relationships that command respect, trust and confidence.
• That you are an inspirational and motivated leader with high levels of resilience and management skills that encourage commitment from others and promote a positive and motivated organisational culture.
• A collaborative team worker who can build positive relationships and work effectively across boundaries and achieve results through others.

We are flexible on your location and of course it is reasonable to expect you will work from home a proportion of the time. However, as a senior leader you will be expected to be visible and accessible to your team and as such you should expect to be attend relevant offices in the areas for key meetings, and there may also be some additional travel and overnight stays in different parts of the country, including our offices in central London.

If you join us, you will be well-supported through induction, supervision, learning and performance review, whether you are already at this level of leadership or are taking your next career step.

We offer an attractive reward package, flexible working to achieve that important work/life balance, and a comprehensive programme of support to maintain your wellbeing at work that includes 4 ‘wellbeing days’ in addition to a generous annual leave entitlement. You may also be able to bring your ‘continuous service’ with you, bringing further benefits.

We are an organisation valuing, promoting and prioritising equality, diversity and inclusion and we especially welcome applications from people with diverse backgrounds. The Chief Executive and Corporate Directors sponsor our objectives in this regard, listening to and encouraging feedback from families, children, our staff, and partners about how well we are doing in terms of understanding and celebrating uniqueness.

Next steps

We have set out a timeline here for the recruitment to this role. However, we understand that given the time of year you may have personal commitments that mean, if shortlisted, you are unable to attend on the dates we have indicated. We will do everything we can to offer an alternative interview date if required.

Closing date for applications:         Wednesday 17^th July

Panel interviews:                              29 / 31 July / 1 August

We also understand you may want to informally discuss the role with someone. If so, you are welcome to contact Rehana Hanif (Assistant Director) via rehana.hanif@cafcass.gov.uk providing your contact details and advising of the better times to contact you. However, if the closing date for applications is approaching, we encourage you to apply before the deadline and if you subsequently decide not to progress, your application can be withdrawn.

We look forward to hearing from you.