An exciting opportunity has arisen for a Head of Service to lead and provide strategic direction for our Fostering, Children in Care, Care Leavers and Contact Centre Teams.  You will work in partnership with the Heads of Service group to ensure there is a whole system approach to safeguarding children and improve their outcomes.

You will have strategic and overall responsibility for ensuring that assessments and plans for children in care and care leavers are timely, appropriate to their needs and deliver improved outcomes and to secure permanence, so they experience good quality family life.  You will support the Trust in providing a quality, cost effective Looked After, Care Leavers and Fostering service which achieves the strategic aims of the Trust and the broader partnership and meets the needs of children in Sandwell.

You will:

• Be a qualified Social Worker with significant experience of providing effective leadership and management direction within a children & families service with the ability to motivate and develop individuals and groups of employees
• You will have senior management and be experienced at initiating, developing, implementing and evaluating major policy initiatives and Organisational change programmes, demonstrating the capacity to think strategically and develop innovative and practical responses to a range of management and of translating organisational vision into solid, measurable achievement.
• You will be a dynamic leader with a proven track record of leading a service processing the ability to engage, negotiate and influence a wide range of audiences building positive relationships with key stakeholders.
• You will have high expectations and ambitions for children and young people, as a corporate parent you will work relentlessly to ensure that Children and young people in Sandwell are able to benefit from the best possible outcomes.
• Have Experience of managing and understanding financial issues related to local authorities and have a commercial minded and able to make the most cost-effective decisions for the service.

The Trust has made significant improvements in the way we deliver services for our children through our ambitious transformation programme. We continue to focus on a number of key areas, which include delivering on our ethos, values and guiding principles alongside a tenacious approach to the delivery of excellent practice through our strengths-based practice model.  This has involved the whole workforce with some powerful messages being shared about what is driving us in our roles. If you are interested in joining us we look forward to hearing from you at this critical and exciting time as we continue to move together at pace to create a new narrative within Sandwell.

We have agreed six strategic priorities which are driving our work; Practice; People; Partnerships; Prevention; Meeting Need; and Measuring Progress; and Striving for Excellence.

With the work that we have done so far and with the ambitions we have for the future, it’s a really exciting time to join Sandwell Children’s Trust and to become part of our ‘Sandwell Family’

If you are Interested, have any question or would welcome an informal discussion with our Operations Director,  Steven Gauntley please let us know or contact Steven direct at Steven_Gauntley@sandwellchildrenstrust.org

Employee Benefits
Job Description
Personal Specification
Accountabilities

To apply please click the Apply Now link below.