Head Of Practice Development

HEAD OF PRACTICE DEVELOPMENT  
Location: National 
Reporting to: Director of Practice & Learning  
Salary: £60,000 FT (hybrid and flexible working but with an expectation of frequent travel to and overnight stays at Practices across England and to SHiFT’s national offices in Central London)  
We want you to join us at SHiFT to change the world for young people caught in the destructive cycle of crime and associated behaviours.  
This is the job that reminds you of why you went into this work – to end the harm of children and young people being trapped in repeated criminality and change the focus from one of difficulty to one of aspiration and hope. Leading a team of Practice Development Leads, you will be responsible for equipping SHiFT practitioners with the knowledge and skills they need to flourish, and for supporting practitioners, through intensive on the ground practice guidance, to deliver SHiFT’s practice model and achieve exceptional outcomes for children, young people, and families.  
You are likely to be someone with significant senior practice experience in the youth criminal justice or adolescent safeguarding systems, with a thorough understanding of its benefits and limitations and detailed knowledge of its agencies, systems, and policies. You will hold extremely high expectations for the children and young people SHiFT works with, and for the quality of engagement and services they receive from relevant professionals and agencies, and this will be reflected in your determination to develop transformational practice. You will have demonstrable experience of getting the best out of people, across varied professional backgrounds, and innovating to create the training and support needed to deliver exceptional outcomes for children and families. It is likely that you will be frustrated by aspects of the current system, with experience of developing new or emerging interventions and the ambiguity inevitably involved in such an ambitious endeavour as this.   
About SHiFT  
SHiFT exists to break the destructive cycle of children and young people caught up in, or at risk of, crime. We seek to transform both policy and practice in how young people in these circumstances are seen and supported.  
Our vision is for every child and young person to be kept safe, to be nurtured by people who see the potential in them, and to be supported and challenged to move to a place of strength and responsibility from which they can aspire, achieve, and contribute to society. Policy and practice should deliver on this aspiration for everyone. 
The SHiFT Programme:  
Despite the hard work and dedication of many professionals, the system isn't working. Thousands of children & young people across the country, with disproportionate numbers from Black, Asian & minority ethnic communities, are involved in gangs, county lines, drug running, or knife crime. Others are on the fringes but at high risk of getting further caught up in it. This is often exacerbated by exclusion from education and the impact of adverse childhood experiences. Still more are leaving care or custody and trying to navigate complex systems of support at a time when they are particularly vulnerable to recruitment or exploitation.  
SHiFT is determined to change things.  
At SHiFT, we do things differently. We are not limited by the jurisdiction of a place or local authority, which means we are able to reach the child and stay with them, wherever they are and wherever they go. We will be alongside them whether they are in or out of education or in or out of custody. We are not limited by service thresholds. We will help them navigate and manage their post pandemic lives. We will be there for them until they are able to break the cycle and move from a place of hopelessness to one of aspiration, enabling them to gain the skills and take the steps needed to reach their potential.  
At the heart of the SHiFT approach is the nurturing relationship developed between the practitioner, who we call the SHiFT Guide, and the child, with the time to do whatever it takes to support sustained change. The Guide and the child will work systemically together across all aspects of the child’s life, from relationships with family and friends, to their interaction with statutory professionals, education and employment, whilst shifting perceptions so that children and young people are seen as an asset to society with the potential to succeed, rather than one where they are viewed as a ‘problem’.  
SHiFT Guides work with no more than six young people at any one time and support them for a significant amount of time, approximately 18 months. SHiFT Guides provide an intense, consistent, and flexible programme of support, tailored to individual needs, enabling the child or young person to tackle destructive cycles of behaviour, develop new skills and avoid further trauma and offending. This is a radical departure from the current model, where practitioners hold caseloads of between 10-20 children and support is often only available for a matter of weeks, as children move in and out of the thresholds of different parts of the system.  
A SHiFT Practice consists of four SHiFT Guides, a Lead Guide, and a Practice Coordinator. SHiFT Guides come from a range of professional backgrounds, including social work, youth offending, education, the probation service, and healthcare. This dedicated team will support between 20 to 27 children. They will work alongside and across the statutory system, ensuring duplication is avoided and scarce resources are directed and purposeful. From the outset and long after children finish the Programme, SHiFT will result in significant savings to public finances.  
Job Description:  
SHiFT’s Head of Practice Development will lead the supervisory and direct practice work SHiFT does with children, young people and the people in their lives who matter. This is a critical role for an expert in practice with complex and highly vulnerable young people. The role is an opportunity to take on a system influencing position to shake up the youth criminal justice system.  
The role has been designed so that you would directly lead a small central team and be outwardly focussed on supporting SHiFT Guides and SHiFT Practices to work in ways with young people that are aligned with the SHiFT Framework. We do not want you focussed on managing a large team, developing the central organisation, or managing partnerships with local authorities. We want you to be obsessively focussed on consistently excellent practice.  
Key Duties  
Working with support and direction from SHiFT’s Director of Practice and Learning, your principal responsibilities will be:  

• Ensure quality of Practice. You will be responsible for the quality of direct work with young people and their families across the SHiFT Practices. With a help of a small practice team, you will work very closely with Guides in local areas ensuring that the high expectations for the work are being met consistently and sustainably. You will make active use of data on child outcomes, observations of Practice and contributions to group supervision sessions to inform your view of quality. Where SHiFT Practices have become stuck in their change work with a young person, your team will be on hand to help them find a way through with creativity, tenacity, and high expectations.  
• Implement the professional development programme for SHiFT Guides and contribute to its development. You will contribute to the delivery of a programme of induction, direct instruction, coaching, mentoring and supervision to grow the capability and resilience of SHiFT Guides across England, holding overall responsibility for the implementation of SHiFT’s professional development offer.  
• Implement the SHiFT Framework and contribute to its development. You will be responsible for holding people accountable for working to the SHiFT Framework, ensuring SHiFT’s highest aspirations for practice quality are met, and contributing to the development of the Framework and associated resources and training to support continuous quality assurance, improvement, and learning. Working with your team of Practice Development Leads, you’ll work closely with Guides, Operational Leads, and other members of the national SHiFT team to ensure that the Framework is widely understood and consistently implemented.  
• Promote SHiFT practice for wider system change. You will support wider system changes by role modelling SHiFT’s distinctive approach to practice so that we can influence the adoption of our approach. This will include spotlighting examples of excellent practice with young people and being a town-crier of these stories. 
• Work in lockstep with Partnerships Managers. Your practice team will work in tandem with Partnerships Managers who scope and develop partnerships and then ensure that the contractual partnership between SHiFT and local partners is working. Where partnership problems arise, they are often closely linked with, or have a knock-on impact to, practice.  

Person specification:  
Beliefs and alignment

• The belief that all people are capable of change and that a relationship with a skilled practitioner can be a powerful driver of this.  
• The belief that young people who display behaviours linked to offending can be supported so that they cease offending and meaningfully contribute to society.  
• The belief that, with the right support, practitioners can offer vulnerable children consistently excellent care even in the most challenging contexts. 
• An alignment to a culture of freedom and responsibility where there are fewer rules, high levels of accountability and a need for excellent performance from the entire team.  
• An optimistic outlook, with a problem solving, ‘sleeves rolled up’ approach to getting things done: you see potential in challenges and are ready to create more hopeful alternatives for everyone SHiFT works with.  
• A demonstrable alignment to the Breaking Cycles ingredients in your work – see https://shiftuk.org/breaking-cycles.  
• A preparedness to challenge the status-quo and be positively disruptive in the pursuit of higher standards even when this is uncomfortable.  

Experience, knowledge and skills:  

• Substantial expertise in leading, developing and assuring exceptional practice between practitioners and young people caught in highly risky situations and relationships.
• Knowledge of, and/or experience of using, systemic ideas in practice with children and young people would be highly advantageous. 
• Experience of influencing the practice of others through your own direct line management, through supervision, coaching and teaching.   
• Detailed knowledge of youth justice and children’s social care agencies, systems, and policies.  
• Experience of developing new or emerging intervention programmes that respond effectively to feedback and learning while managing the ambiguity inevitably involved in such an ambitious project as this.  
• Skill in holding others to high expectations through high levels of support and challenge.  
• A thorough understanding and experience of using different theories and methods for intervening with children and families to offer help and bring about change in high- risk complex environments.  
• An ability to write and speak credibly about complex or technical ideas, as well as a capacity to turn them into practical action, including through Practice Development activities. 
• A track record of working in a small team, contributing robustly to shape thinking but consistently being able to be a team player.  

Qualifications  

• Relevant professional qualification  
• Systemic practice qualification would be advantageous  
• Professional registration  
• Right to work in the UK  
• This post is subject to a police check of previous criminal convictions with the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS)  

To apply please provide your CV and short covering letter (no more than 2 pages) and send to info@shiftuk.org