Head of Service - First Assessment Service and Youth Justice Service
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Job description
Head of Service - First Assessment Service and Youth Justice Service
Are you passionate about making a positive impact on the lives of children and safeguarding their future? We are seeking an experienced Senior Manager to join our Head of Service Team in Bristol, providing leadership and support to deliver high-quality services for children and families.
This is a new role for Bristol following investment in our service. This role is pivotal in shaping Bristol's strategic response to safeguarding, youth justice, and extra-familial harm while ensuring high standards of service delivery and compliance with statutory requirements
Role Overview:
As the Head of Service for the First Assessment Service and the Youth Justice Service you will be working closely with and leading and managing the Service Managers to ensure timely, effective interventions for children and families. You will work with partners locally, regionally and nationally to ensure our services develop in line with the new frameworks and legislation to ensure that children are protected and supported in a proactive and child focused way. .
In addition to providing operational oversight and strategic development, you will support the Service Managers in managing budgets, workforce, and performance, while upholding the highest standards of practice.
The First Assessment Service is the primary point of access for children in need of help and protection across the city and our Youth Justice Service is a centrally based team supporting children in the community. Both services are clear about their vision in supporting and protecting children and families, raising expectations for all children irrespective of their starting point in life and the head of service is crucial to the focus and delivery of this vision.
This is an exciting opportunity to be part of our Families First transformation supporting us to expand our services in 2025. This is so that we can support children and families at the earliest point, whilst also providing intensive support to children and families when they need it, whether this be at a family help level requiring additional multi agency support or a specialist help level where children and families need that intensive intervention or for children in our care.
Our neighbourhood model and our new specialist teams will enable our family support workers, key workers and social workers to have the recommended number of children allocated to them that will enable them to deliver intensive support whilst also being supported by our new specialist teams when there is harm outside the home and or a child is at risk of needing to come into our care.
As we move into the new year, we are looking forward to building on the brilliant work our teams already do with children by expanding our services to create the conditions for our teams to feel supported, have the time they need to work intensively with children and families, access good training, feel psychologically safe and listened to, whilst experiencing healthy challenge to thrive in their roles in our joint vision with children and families. We will continue our commitment of working with integrity, honesty, kindness, transparency, collaboration and family led decision making as we build on what we do well and learn together to develop our work further.
"We will help families to achieve the change they want to see for themselves and their children. We believe that children should live with their family or someone who knows them best. We act when children need to be protected from harm and we do everything we can to make sure that children in our care and care leavers are set up for life."
Why Join Us?
This role offers the opportunity to be at the forefront of delivering transformational services that make a real difference. If you are a dedicated manager/leader with a commitment to improving the lives of vulnerable children and families, we would love to hear from you. Please see our social work microsite here to learn more about the work we do: Social workers, make your mark in Bristol
How to Apply
If you are a dedicated manager/leader with a commitment to improving the lives of vulnerable children and families, we would love to hear from you.
It is Bristol City Council's practice to request references for candidates that have been offered a job. However, if you are applying for a job that requires a Disclosure and Barring Service check then we will request your references once you have been invited to an interview.
We're a Disability Confident employer which means we value recruiting and retaining disabled people. Any job applicants who consider themselves to be disabled and meet the essential criteria in the Person Specification are guaranteed an interview. We'll make reasonable adjustments throughout the interview process and provide continued workplace support throughout your career.
Contact Us:
For more information or to discuss opportunities, contact recruitment.socialwork@bristol.gov.uk
At Bristol City Council, we value having a workforce as diverse as the city we serve. We therefore welcome, develop and promote people from all sections of the community. We particularly welcome applications from Young people, Black and racially minoritised, Disabled, LGBTQ+ and Male candidates who are currently under-represented within this Service of Bristol City Council. Appointments will be made on merit.