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Transformation Lead Placements

Employer
The Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea Council
Location
Kensington and Chelsea, London (Greater)
Salary
£35,900 - £48,500 per annum
Closing date
10 Mar 2021

About Us:

Help put children first and ensure that we make the right placement first time at the right price.

In Kensington and Chelsea, we put local people at the heart of decision-making, working in partnership with them to provide quality services that are responsive, effective and efficient. We work in a Bi-Borough partnership with Westminster City council to deliver Children’s services. By sharing our facilities and expertise, we’re able to offer joined-up services as a large multi-agency team that puts children first.

You’ll be joining a Children’s Operations and Programmes Directorate that challenges the status quo, drives transformation, innovation and improvement and delivers service led positive change. We look after the interests of children whose needs are high and our role is crucial in changing their lives for the better. We are proud of our outstanding rating with Ofsted and want to keep it that way by ensuring we continue to deliver an outstanding service. You’ll help us do just that.

The Role:

Your challenge will be to help lead the placement finding, matching and contracting processes to help locality teams make and maintain stable and cost-effective placements that meet the assessed needs of looked after children. Day-to-day, you’ll help social work teams to manage a children’s placement budget and meet performance targets relating to those placements. You’ll also be responsible for the quality assurance of placement types and ensuring you achieve value for money. 

Engaging with services to delivery specific projects effectively, coming up with solutions that reflect local needs and drivers and taking responsibility for financial management within teams and projects – all are aspects of this high-profile role.

Essentially, the role is to commission placements, and to work collaboratively with providers and social work teams to deliver high quality services. As a skilled commissioner of all placement types within family and children’s services including, foster care, residential children homes, residential schools and semi-Independence units, you will have significant experience and be able to commission multiple live placement searches in a calm and methodical manner using your extensive knowledge of childcare providers.

Please refer to the Job Description for more information. 

About You:

You’ll need sound knowledge of Children’s Services, gained within a local authority setting or the private and voluntary sector, plus direct experience of commissioning a wide range of children’s care placements. To be successful in this role, you will have a track record of driving efficiencies, maintaining strong outcomes, and ensuring that robust quality assurances are in place.

You will be an experienced commissioner of placements within children’s and families and have a firm grasp of working with multi-agencies. Above all, you understand the circumstances children find themselves in and are compassionate, have strong problem-solving skills and can remain calm under pressure.

In return, you can look forward to a package that includes a competitive salary, a high-quality pension scheme and generous annual leave plus bank holidays.

Please apply online, specifying in your personal statement/cover letter how you meet the criteria as set out in the Person Specification. CVs will not be accepted for this role.

We work in partnership with Hampshire County Council (HCC) who deliver many transactional services on our behalf. Although most communications will be from HCC, all selection and appointment decisions will be made by RBKC. Certain services are shared across more than one Council area to nearby neighbouring Authorities. This enhances delivery and reduces costs. Your recruitment information will advise if your remit extends beyond RBKC.

We will primarily contact candidates by e-mail throughout the recruitment process, please monitor your email junk / spam folder as our system generated emails may be allocated to these folders by your email settings.

We engage our staff with a variety of learning types including face-to-face and virtual learning because we want to ensure our staff understand our values and behaviours, grow their skills and develop their careers.

Additional information

RBKC is currently inclusively reviewing its pay, reward and benefits framework.

This post is covered by the Fluency Duty, as outlined in the Code of Practice on the English language requirements for public sector workers.

We are committed to promoting equality and respecting diversity and welcome applications from all sections of the community.

We are a Disability Confident Employer – committed to ensuring that our recruitment and selection process is inclusive and accessible. 

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