Bexley is an outer London Borough with the best of both worlds, located between the hustle and bustle of London and the Garden of England, Kent. Within the borough we have award winning parks, open spaces and listed heritage sites.

In Bexley, we are highly ambitious to continue to improve outcomes for our children and young people in our care. Wherever possible we support young people to return home to their family and securing permanence for young people is central to the work we do. As such you will work closely with our adoption and fostering teams. We have an active Signs of Safety Implementation group, and we will support and encourage you to work creatively in order to secure positive outcomes for young people. We are passionate about the work we do and if you want excellent support and supervision and if you care as much as we do about supporting the aspirations of children and young people in our care in Bexley then this is the service for you. 

The service manager will be responsible for supervising, leading, and supporting team managers within the Children in Care and Permanence Service. This is an exciting role that requires a leader with ambition, creativity and proven experience leading Children’s Services and opportunity for a passionate Social Worker Manager to work with children and young people in our care.

This service has 3 teams with responsibility for all children in care, care proceedings and young people who we are helping prepare to leave our care or move into our dedicated Leaving Care Service. The role also includes having responsibility for the contact service and managing our Systemic Practitioners.

Please refer to the Job Description attached for more information.

For an informal discussion about the role please contact Tamsyn Basson, Deputy Director of Children’s Services, Telephone: 0203 0454630; Email : Tamsyn.Basson@bexley.gov.uk.

We will offer you in return a package that includes a competitive salary, an excellent pension scheme and generous annual leave plus bank holidays. For more information on the benefits package on offer please refer to the Candidate Information document attached.

We reserve the right to close adverts earlier than the closing date.

You will have managed operational teams within children’s social care and have a genuine commitment to the provision of high quality services for children and young people in our care.  In line with our Signs of Safety practice model, it is highly desirable if you will have previous training and/or experience working with a solution focused approach as you will be expected to promote this within the service.

Due to the nature of the work, you will often be dealing with a variety of complex, risky, and diverse issues when supporting and safeguarding the young people and young adults we work with. This requires you to have extensive knowledge and experience with professional standards for social work as well as the laws, statutory guidance, and local policies and procedures and to ensure these are being modelled and adhered to across the service.

You will help implement the strategic oversight and development of the Children in Care and Permanence Service – working with children and young people in our care, young adults leaving care, staff and stakeholders.

For the full list of essential and desirable criteria for this role then please refer to the Person Specification within the Job Description attached.

Appointment to this post will be subject to the outcome of an Enhanced Disclosure obtained through the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS)

Use the ‘Apply for vacancy’ button.

Anticipated Interview Date: 27/11/2024 

Please note that the system has a one-hour time limit. We would advise you to prepare your answers separately and then copy and paste into the online form once finalised and have your CV and/or Supporting statement ready to upload.

If any mandatory fields are missing, a pop-up box will appear at the top of the page advising which sections require completion. Please check your Junk email for any correspondence. 

Additional Information

As a disability confident employer Bexley welcomes applications from people with all disabilities, including hidden disabilities and mental health conditions. We will interview any disabled applicant who meets the minimum criteria. If you require reasonable adjustments to be made to any part of the recruitment process due to your disability, please contact recruitment@bexley.gov.uk 

This authority is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people and vulnerable adults and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment.

This post is considered by the authority to be a customer-facing position; as such it falls within scope of the Code of Practice on English language requirement for public sector workers. The council therefore has a statutory duty under Part 7 of the Immigration Act 2016 to ensure that post holders have a command of spoken English sufficient for the effective performance of the