Team Manager - Adolescent Team

About the role

Are you an experienced social work professional looking for the next step in your career? Come and join us in the Adolescent Team as our Team Manager!

This is an exciting opportunity for a Team Manager to join us in our Adolescent Teams!  

We are looking for someone who is passionate about achieving positive outcomes for young people to lead a team of social workers and child practitioners to safeguard vulnerable teenagers and to promote successful development at this crucial stage of their lives. 

We work in small, friendly and well supported teams that are closely linked to our other adolescent services including the Youth Justice Service (YJS) and our specialist teams for supporting children who face risks outside the home. Our approach is trauma-informed and relationship-based, with specialist psychology support for the workforce and an emphasis on direct work with young people so that our staff can make a difference.  

Young people are referred to our team for one or more of these reasons: they regularly go missing; they are at risk of criminal or sexual exploitation; they are involved in serious violence; they have significant challenges with their mental health or substance misuse; they are at imminent risk of entering care because of family breakdown; or they are aged 16/17 and homeless. 

You will be joining at an exciting time as we are redeveloping our contextual safeguarding response to young people who are at risk in the community. The Adolescent Teams will be at the forefront of this crucial work. 

This post is for our South Team, which covers Cambridge City, South Cambridgeshire and East Cambridgeshire. This can be a hybrid role with a mixture of home and office working, with the expectation of being in an office at least 2 days per week.

Apply now or for more information call Nathalie on 01223 475920. Alternatively, you can email us on joinus@cambridgeshire.gov.uk or visit our website for more information. 

Interviews will be held in person w/c 13th May

In Children’s Services we are working to reshape what we do and how we do it. Why not be part of it? 

Appointment to this post will be subject to the outcome of an Enhanced Disclosure obtained through the Disclosure and Barring Service. The Council is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and vulnerable adults and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment. 

We support flexible working requests from day one of employment and so we are open to discussing different working patterns to help you bring your best self to work. 

What will you be doing?

The day-to-day responsibilities of a Team Manager in the Adolescent Team include: 

• Management oversight for a team holding a caseload of vulnerable teenagers with responsibility for assessment, planning and intervention in order to fulfil statutory responsibilities. Most young people are supported through Child In Need plans. A small number are subject to Child Protection Plans or are Children in Care. 
• Supervision of a team of 1x Senior Practitioner, 2x Social Workers and 3x Child Practitioners.
• Working alongside partner agencies (e.g. YJS, SAFE, CAMHS, schools, Police) to implement effective multi-agency plans to increase safety for young people. This will include chairing Strategy Discussions and other meetings as needed.
• Managing the workload of the team, including threshold decisions relating to new referrals or transfers from other teams.
• Quality assurance and auditing of casework practice.
• Working as part of the Youth Support Service management team to develop the service offer to vulnerable adolescents in Cambridgeshire.

About you

We're looking for an experienced practitioner or current manager with strong leadership skills and a passion for working with adolescents. The successful candidate will have significant experience in casework practice and have a proven record of building relationships with colleagues and partner agencies, as well as being creative and dynamic.

You must:

• Be a qualified Social Worker with a Social Work England registration
• Have the ability to work from a variety of locations and travel countywide independently

For a full list of the requirements of the role, please check out the Job Description & Person Specification.

Our benefits

We value our colleagues in Cambridgeshire County Council and have developed a number of benefits. Benefits include:

• Flexible and creative working arrangements, including agile working
• Generous annual leave entitlement and flexible Bank Holidays
• A comprehensive wellbeing package
• Our Cambs Rewards employee discounts
• A comprehensive pension scheme
• IDEAL staff equality, diversity and inclusion network
• Camweb our staff intranet helping to keep you informed
• An employee recognition scheme

About us

We are proud to serve the diverse communities of Cambridgeshire and want our workforce to be reflective of this diversity, which we firmly believe benefits our colleagues, the organisation and our communities. If you don’t meet every single requirement in the job role but think this could be you, please don’t be put off.   We are committed to building a workplace that is compassionate and inclusive as well as diverse, so if you think you could be a good candidate for this role please consider applying and speak to the recruiting manager if you have any questions.

Our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy, along with our employee network 'IDEAL' and self-organised peer support groups help us to foster an inclusive, supportive and safe working environment where people feel valued, respected, and empowered.  We collect relevant diversity data for monitoring as part of the recruitment process to understand the diversity of our applicants and monitor any trends throughout the recruitment processes so that we can take meaningful action.

We are proud to be a Disability Confident Employer. We fully support providing reasonable adjustments throughout our recruitment process, as well as when you join us, and we encourage candidates to contact the Hiring Manager, whose details can be found in the advert, to discuss any adjustment needs. Some examples of adjustments could include additional time to complete an assessment or printing a document on pastel coloured paper with larger font size and line spacing. We would value talking about what might be possible to enable you to join us and thrive, so if there is something that would help you to do your best during your journey with us, please get in touch.

https://www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk/council/jobs-and-careers

Attached documents

• Team Manager JDPS CCC.pdf
• CSW Benefits Brochure 2024 (2).pdf
• Practice Handbook November 2023 (2).pdf