Head of Service: Children in Care, Care Leavers, Fostering and Adoption

Overview

In this role you provide strategic leadership for Children in Care, Care Leavers, Fostering, Kinship, Adoption and UASC services to secure high-quality, safe and child-centred outcomes. You will drive service improvement, permanence and placement sufficiency, while maintaining corporate parenting obligations. You’ll build partnerships across health, education and wider agencies to deliver better outcomes at scale. This is a transformative, cross-service leadership opportunity within Staffordshire’s Children and Families services.

Pay / Benefits

• salary within advertised range
• supportive working environment
• healthy work-life balance
• equal opportunities employer
• Disability Confident employer
• guaranteed interview if minimum criteria met

Responsibilities

• Lead strategic and operational delivery across Children in Care, Care Leavers, Fostering, Kinship, Adoption and UASC services, ensuring compliant, outcome-focused practice
• Drive service improvement, sufficiency planning and stable placement networks for children and young people
• Provide strategic leadership for fostering, kinship and adoption services, including recruitment and development of carers and adopters
• Build strong partnerships with local authorities, health, education, housing and other agencies to improve outcomes
• Lead performance management, quality assurance and compliance to drive continuous improvement
• Oversee budgets, resources and transformation programmes to ensure sustainable, effective services for children and young people

Key requirements

• Degree or equivalent-level qualification
• Qualified and registered Social Worker
• Relevant management qualification or substantial management training
• Substantial post-qualification experience in children’s social care with senior leadership responsibilities
• Experience managing and developing teams with strong people management skills
• Proven track record leading high-performing services and driving improvement
• Experience managing investigations, complaints and complex service issues

• strong leadership presence
• people management and development
• stakeholder engagement and collaboration
• performance management
• quality assurance and compliance
• transformation programme leadership

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