Team Manager Safeguarding Adolescent

The starting salary for this role is £46,634 - £52,625 per annum for working 36 hours per week. 

We have an exciting opportunity for a Team Manager to join our Safeguarding Adolescent Team based in the South East Surrey Area. To be successful in this role, you will have the relevant skills and an enthusiasm for working within our multi-disciplinary model of practice, Family Safeguarding & Resilience.

You will be joining a team that consists of 1 Advanced Practitioner, up to 5 Social Workers, 2 Youth support Workers and a CAMHS Specialist Worker. The Adolescent Safeguarding Service work openly and honestly with families about their difficulties and how we can support them to change. The model is reliant on informed consent and our practitioners will always work hard to actively engage families as the agents of their change. We try to work with families under child in need however we always place the child's safety at the heart of our plans and we will continue to work with families under child protection plans when required.

The Adolescent Safeguarding Service works with families predominantly with children and young people aged 12 plus whose main concern is contextual safeguarding, neglect, on the edge of care or family breakdown including beyond parental control.

Family and Adolescent Safeguarding teams share adult mental health workers, domestic abuse practitioners and officers, and substance misuse workers. Our approach is about more than simply introducing adult workers; it is about creating a structure of truly integrated practice. In this respect, group case discussions will be a pivotal component to integrate the different perspectives of adult specialists to create a more informed understanding of how to help families and an attainable plan to support them. Perhaps just as important are the opportunities for informal discussions about families: for instance, before or after a difficult visit.

Family and Adolescent Safeguarding aims to help parents tackle the challenges in their lives that impact negatively on their parenting. The workers in the team will develop a plan with families that builds on strengths and enables them to make changes so that children and young people can remain in their care. This is a strong emphasis on relationships – relationships with workers and family, relationships within families, relationships within the Family Safeguarding or Adolescent team. The barometer of success is, of course, what children and young people experience in their families and if after we have supported the adults to make changes this has no impact on children's lives, we will have to consider next steps to secure children or young people’s futures.

Essential requirements for the role: 

1. Having a critical eye on monitoring and tracking team performance standards and ensuring targets are met in a timely way in accordance with Key Performance Indicators.
2. Support the service to embed the Family Safeguarding Model.
3. Provide high quality reflective individual and group supervision within the Family Safeguarding Model.
4. Develop strengths-based motivational practice and use the skills of the multi-disciplinary teams to address parental mental health, substance misuse and domestic abuse.
5. Manage effective communication of practice, service and organisational issues within the team, and work collaboratively across other social work teams, services and with partners to provide high-level integrated support to children and families.

Essential training required: Motivational Interviewing is a requirement of this role but mandatory training in MI will be provided if you have not already completed this.

Why work for Surrey?

Surrey is on a positive improvement journey across our services for children, young people and families evidenced following the recent Ofsted grading of ‘requires improvement to get to good’. There is further work to do and support in place to fulfil both vision and ambitions that we have for children and young people in Surrey.

The Family and Adolescent Safeguarding model is offering a rich service to families where they are benefiting from intensive intervention from a committed passionate staff team who want to promote change for families to ensure that where it is safe to do so, children remain in the care of their families. All SW’s receive one to one supervision which is prioritised alongside support from their managers. There is a stable team of managers and staff. The teams also benefit from group supervision monthly which enables multi-disciplinary case discussions with specialist adult practitioners and children’s practitioners. Surrey has good systems in place to work towards good outcomes for children.

We are offering a new financial package of up to £6000 to new permanent qualified frontline case-holding Team Managers (subject to tax and national insurance deductions and paid pro rata if you are part time):

• An unconsolidated welcome payment of £1,000 with a corresponding retention period of six months
• A further unconsolidated retention payment of £2,000 on completion of six months service, with a corresponding retention period of twelve months
• A final unconsolidated retention payment of £3,000 on completion of 18 months service with a corresponding retention period of two years
• Payment will be deducted from the final month salary should the corresponding tie in period not be completed.

The job advert closes at 23:59 on 4th September 2022.

Interviews will take place on 12th September 2022.

An Enhanced DBS ‘Disclosure and Barring Service’ check for regulated activity (formerly known as CRB) and the Children’s and Adults’ Barred List checks will be required for this role.

Contact Details

For an informal discussion please contact Angela Eagling by e-mail at angela.eagling1@surreycc.gov.uk.

We look forward to receiving your application, please click on the apply online button below to submit.

Our Commitment

Surrey County Council is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment. We want to be an inclusive and diverse employer of first choice reflecting the community we serve and particularly welcome applications from all under represented groups.