Service Manager - North East Locality Office

Service Manager (Children's Services, North East Practice Team)

North East Locality Office

Salary: £67,457 - £80,569

Hours: 36 per week

Every child deserves to grow up safe, loved and able to reach their full potential. As Service Manager for North East Practice Team, you will play a pivotal role in ensuring that children at risk of harm receive the right support at the right time. This is an opportunity to lead a skilled social work team, drive excellence in practice and shape a team that makes a lasting difference to children, young people and families.

We are looking for an experienced, values-driven leader who is passionate about delivering high-quality, relationship-based social work. You will foster a culture of continuous improvement, collaboration and learning, while ensuring that children's voices remain at the heart of everything we do.

Working closely with partners across health, education, police and the third sector, you'll champion effective safeguarding, promote innovation and ensure services meet the highest standards of practice, governance and performance. If you are committed to The Promise, children's rights and improving outcomes for families, we'd love to hear from you.

The Service Manager will:

• Provide strategic and operational leadership, ensuring the safety and wellbeing of children and young people is at the centre of all decision-making.
• Lead, motivate and support Team Leaders and their staff groups to deliver high-quality, relationship-based social work practice.
• Ensure statutory responsibilities, and local procedures are fulfilled, including child protection, looked after children, permanence and corporate parenting duties.
• Drive continuous improvement through quality assurance, performance management, internal audits, and learning from reviews and inspections.
• Champion a culture of professional curiosity, reflective supervision, trauma-informed practice and continuous professional development.
• Ensure effective workforce planning, recruitment, retention and succession planning, promoting staff wellbeing and high professional standards.
• Develop and maintain effective partnerships with Health, Education, Police Scotland, the Scottish Children's Reporter Administration (SCRA), the third sector and other key agencies to improve outcomes for children and families.
• Lead on complex safeguarding issues, providing strategic oversight and professional advice on high-risk and sensitive cases.
• Manage service budgets effectively, ensuring resources are deployed efficiently while delivering best value.
• Ensure robust governance arrangements are in place, including oversight of risk management, complaints, audits, data quality and statutory reporting.
• Analyse performance information and use data to drive service improvement, reduce inequalities and improve outcomes.
• Promote the voices, rights and participation of children, young people and families in service development and decision-making.
• Lead implementation of national policy and legislative developments.
• Foster an inclusive, collaborative culture that promotes equality, diversity, human rights and anti-discriminatory practice.
• Undertake any other duties appropriate to the role and commensurate with the level of responsibility.

This post is regulated work with children and/or protected adults under the Protection of Vulnerable Groups (Scotland) Act 2007. The preferred candidate will be required to join the PVG Scheme or undergo a PVG Scheme update check. Where an individual has spent a continuous period of 3 months or more out with the UK in the last 5 years, an Overseas Criminal Record Check will be required. You will be required to provide this check. An unconditional offer of employment and commencement in the post will be subject to the outcome of both these pre-employment checks being deemed satisfactory.

We are committed to a diverse and inclusive workforce where everyone feels valued and able to be their best. We particularly encourage applications from women for senior roles, as well as people from minority ethnic backgrounds, people with disabilities or neurodivergent people, care experienced people, carers and LGBT+ people across all levels of the organisation, all of whom are currently underrepresented. All applicants will be considered fairly based on skills and experience. Disabled and care-experienced applicants who meet the minimum job criteria will be guaranteed an interview.

Find out more about our commitment to equalities

As part of our goal to improve organisational culture and create a great place to work together for the people of Edinburgh, we want to make sure we're recruiting the best people. We're interested not only in your skills and experience but also in your approach to work. Therefore, part of our interview process will be an assessment of how you would bring Our Behaviours of Respect, Integrity and Flexibility into your ways of working.

You can find out more on Our Behaviours web page Our Behaviours – The City of Edinburgh Council

Our salary range typically reflects the initial starting salary and annually increases until it reaches the top of the range.

Happy to talk flexible working.

Follow us on X at @edincounciljobs

Service Manager job description

Service Manager person specification

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