Team Manager - Children with Disabilities

Working within the Children With Disabilities Team, you will offer a specialist social work service for children and young people disabilities and complex needs. You will work with them, their families and other agencies to understand and meet their assessed needs; supporting them to achieve their potential. You will understand the impact of disability on children's lives. You will be able to work in partnership with disabled children and their families as well as other key stakeholders.

As a team manager, you will be directly responsible for supervising and supporting social workers and child and family workers. You will be responsible for performance management and quality assurance within the team, ensuring that the team contributes to the Directorate's priorities and maintains good outcomes for children.

You will develop and maintain strong working relationships with colleagues across WSCC, partner agencies and the voluntary and profit-making sectors in order to improve outcomes for individual children and young people. You will contribute to the development and shape of future team or group service provision and inform the work of the organisation and that of other service providers, supporting and managing change as needed within their area of responsibility. You will contribute to and support the development of practice, policies and procedures within the operational team.

We are committed to improving our services for the children and families we support in West Sussex. In May 2023 Ofsted Inspectors praised West Sussex County Council's Children's Services for its 'relentless approach to improving practice,' giving the service an overall rating of 'requires improvement', with 'good' judgements for children in care and leadership and management. The judgements on children needing help and protection and children leaving care are they 'require improvement to be good'.

Inspectors recognised the 'strong, determined and cohesive leadership team' who have made significant improvements since 2019 and their commitment and focus to make further improvements.

Rewards & Benefits

As an employer we recognise that it is our employees that are central to everything we do. We aim to create a supportive and dynamic working environment where employees can achieve their full potential, achieve a healthy work-life balance and are rewarded for the work they do.

For a full list of the benefits offered to you as a West Sussex County Council employee you can find them on our Rewards and Benefits page.

The Opportunity

As a team manager, you will lead, motivate, nurture, and manage a team of social workers and child and family workers, to deliver a children's social care service. You will be responsible for ensuring the service provided is effective and delivering the required outcomes, as well as ensuring cases are dealt with in a timely manner. You will ensure that children and young people are adequately protected in line with our policies, procedures and relevant legislation.

You will provide professional advice and support to the team and the wider department. Alongside this you will enable and challenge others to develop their knowledge further. You will also analyse and evaluate the service provision and provide solutions where issues arise., We are particularly interested in hearing from Social Workers interested in joining our Family Safeguarding Teams. These teams work with children and families at the point in their journey where there are safeguarding concerns and act to reduce those risks. They play a key role in child protection, child in need cases and working with families to keep children safe.

The Family Safeguarding Teams undertake meaningful, transparent direct work with children and their families ensuring the most positive outcomes and our diverse practice teams work within a nurturing environment where successes are celebrated and individuals within the team are supported to grow and develop.

There are 6 service teams working geographically, with each managed by a Service Manager. They in turn support 4 to 5 practice teams led by Team Managers. We have a Court Progression Officer leading on our improvement plan for our children within the public law outline. There is a cohort of approximately 1958 children that our Family Safeguarding Teams support ,from pre-birth to 18 years, and children subject to child protection plans and within the public law outline. Some child in need work is undertaken as children step down from child protection planning and transition on to our universal or Early Help service.

If you are passionate about delivering excellent social work and making a difference, have a look at some of the exciting opportunities we currently have in Children's Services.

• Do you have excellent interpersonal and communication skills?


• Do you have a social work qualification and registration?, So what skills and experience will you need to succeed in this role? Below is a summary of what we are looking for in our Team Manager:


• Problem solver who can make decisions and provide professional advice to the service and wider organisation.


• Excellent communicator with exceptional interpersonal skills which enables you to influence others and deliver complex information to a multitude of audiences.


• People and Performance Manager so you can successfully lead the team.


• Recognised Social Work Qualification with relevant professional registration.


• Experience of delivering and co-ordinating a quality customer focused service.
  
  West Sussex County Council


Children First in West Sussex

West Sussex is a beautiful county located on the South Coast of England. Within easy reach of sandy beaches and rolling hills, West Sussex also boasts a perfect balance of cosmopolitan towns such as Crawley and Horsham, and flourishing market towns like Chichester. West Sussex has so much to offer and is a wonderful place to live, work and play.

At West Sussex County Council, we see the workplace as an environment where people can be themselves, perform to the best of their ability and achieve their potential to deliver services to our residents living in West Sussex. Our staff are our greatest asset and we are committed to the employment, retention and career development of talented individuals.

Social work is a challenging career, and we recognise that to achieve excellent outcomes for our residents, our people need to feel supported, developed, and recognised. Our Social Workers change lives, supporting children and families from the very start and at every step of the way. Our social work teams are based at offices across Chichester, Bognor, Worthing, Horsham, Crawley and Burgess Hill.