Assistant Service Manager

Cafcass (Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service); Crook of Devon; Hybrid; GBP 38,000 - 48,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Wellbeing support

Excellent benefits

Job summary

Cafcass is recruiting for an Assistant Service Manager to lead and supervise a team of Family Court Advisers in the Plymouth area. The role supports safeguarding and applies the organisation’s Together with Children and Families framework.

You will supervise, coach, and reflect on practice, maintaining high standards of service delivery while promoting wellbeing and resilience among staff.

Qualifications

• Experience supervising, coaching, or mentoring social workers.
• Strong communication skills, both written and oral.
• Emotional intelligence with ability to engage with children and families.

Responsibilities

• Lead a team of Family Court Advisers and monitor performance.
• Provide reflective case supervision and ensure safeguarding standards.
• Promote the practice framework ‘Together with Children and Families’.
• Ensure high-quality practice and impact of supervision.

Skills

Supervision experience

Communication skills

Emotional intelligence

Education

Registered with Social Work England

Job description

We are recruiting for the role of Assistant Service Manager in our team(s) covering the Plymouth area.

We trust and empower colleagues to work in a hybrid way, providing the resources, equipment, and support, so that individually and collectively, we can be the voice of children and young people when the family court makes critical decisions about their futures.

Whilst this role is part of a team based from our office in Plymouth, our teams work flexibly and remotely, your proximity to the office doesn’t always have to be a critical consideration.

We are a diverse, inclusive organisation that is a safe space for colleagues with shared aspects of identity and lived experience, which helps ensure we provide a service which promotes the diversity and uniqueness of children and families from all backgrounds. We especially welcome applications from people from diverse backgrounds as we strive to ensure our workforce reflects the diversity of the children and families we work with.

We provide extensive wellbeing support for colleagues, as well as excellent benefits, all of which we hope encourages you to join us.

Let us tell you a bit more about the role…

Being an Assistant Service Manager is very rewarding but as you would expect, challenging too. You will manage a team of Family Court Advisers and have a good understanding of what good looks like in Public and Private law cases.

Through your own practice and reflective/case supervision of colleagues, you will consistently reflect and champion the values and core practice of our practice framework, ‘Together with Children and Families’.

As an Assistant Service Manager, it is your duty to safeguard and protect the welfare of children, and the support you provide to colleagues to achieve the same standards of safeguarding practice.

Providing high-quality reflective case supervision, you will be accountable for your own practice and for the quality and impact of the practice quality standards of the Family Court Advisers you directly manage.

… And What We’re Looking For.

As well as being registered with Social Work England, you’ll be organised, resilient, and have some experience of supervising, coaching, or mentoring social workers.

You will promote resilience and wellbeing at work, maintaining morale and be confident in managing employees with a wide range of professional experience.

You will be a good communicator both orally and in writing, with emotional intelligence, at all levels and especially when interacting with children.

Next steps / timelines

Below we have given you an indication of a timetable we are hoping to work towards, although dates are subject to change.

Closing Date

Sunday 4th October 2026

Initial Interview

Tuesday 6th & Wednesday 7th October 2026

Final Interview

Wednesday 14th & Friday 16th October 2026

There is a lot of information available at Cafcass Careers but if there is something else you need to find out more about, you can either Kiera Manuel ([e-mail]) from our HR Resourcing team if your query is to do with the recruitment process or is HR-related, or Gina Charnley ([e-mail]) if your questions relate more to the role, providing your contact information and best times / methods to get hold of you.

Finally, in anticipation of your application being successful, you might want to read about the offer and pre-employment checks process. As part of your application you can highlight any concerns or questions about the pre-employment checks and we encourage all applicants to do so, safe in the knowledge such information will not be shared with individuals involved in the selection process.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Please be advised successful applicants will be subject to a range of pre-engagement checks, including a Disclosure and Barring Service check (DBS). In accordance with the DBS code of practice and our own policy, should an individual have a declared criminal offence an individual assessment will be completed. Further information on what the assessment covers can be found by viewing the Cafcass DBS policy.