Assistant Service Manager

Cafcass; Nottingham; On-site; GBP 60,000 - 80,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading children's support service in Nottingham seeks an Assistant Service Manager to guide Family Court Advisers. You will champion safeguarding practices and ensure high-quality supervision while promoting well-being and morale within your team. This role offers a hybrid working model and extensive benefits including generous holidays and excellent pensions. Join us to help shape the futures of children and families in a diverse and inclusive workplace.

Benefits

28 days holiday plus additional days

19.4% employer pension contribution

Flexible working options

Professional fees reimbursed

Health and wellbeing cash plan

Qualifications

• Experience in supervising, coaching, or mentoring social workers is preferred.
• Ability to manage a diverse team with varying levels of professional experience.
• Excellent oral and written communication skills are necessary.

Responsibilities

• Manage a team of Family Court Advisers and support their practice.
• Champion safeguarding practices and ensure high-quality supervision.
• Advise family courts on the best interests of children.

Skills

Supervision skills

Coaching skills

Communication skills

Emotional intelligence

Organizational skills

Education

Registered with Social Work England

Job description

About the role

We are recruiting for the role of Assistant Service Manager in our team covering the Nottingham and Derby. 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 Nottingham and Derby, 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.

Job Responsibilities

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.

We are Cafcass – the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service – and we represent children in family court cases in England. Independently advising the family courts about what is safe for children and in their best interests, we speak up for over 140,0000 children every year when the family court makes critical decisions about their futures, ensuring their needs, wishes and feelings are heard.

Watch our video to find out we don't just listen to children's voices but we can be their voice.

Qualifications & Experience

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.

Our current networks include:

• Ability Matters – Colleagues with disabilities and long‑term health conditions.
• Carers Network – Colleagues with additional caring responsibilities for someone close to them who has a disability or long‑term health condition.
• Faith Network – Colleagues who are part of, or have an interest in, religious or spiritual faith communities.
• Kaleidoscope Network – Colleagues from Black Asian and Minority Ethnic backgrounds.
• Mental Health Network – Colleagues who experience, or have an interest in, Mental Health issues.
• Pride Network – Colleagues who identify as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans - LGBT+.

Our Values / Practice Framework

‘Together with Children and Families’ (which we just call ‘Together’) is the name of our relationship‑based practice framework. It applies to the work of every individual in Cafcass, from Social Workers to Leaders and includes our Corporate and Business Support teams. It is at the heart of what we do and is made up of our values, how these values work in practice, the tools to use to incorporate these values in our work and the impact this will have on the children and families we serve. This framework encourages us to be pro‑active and to look for the strengths in ourselves and others. It also enables us to build positive relationships with our colleagues, our partners and most importantly, with the children and families with whom we work.

Benefits

• Generous holidays – 28 days holiday (including three for Christmas) rising to 33 days with five years continuous service, which could include your current employment. You can also buy more holiday or sell any you do not need.
• Excellent pension – 19.4% employer contribution to Local Government Pension scheme, potentially building on your current pension.
• Flexible working – Most colleagues work in a hybrid way, having the benefits of working both from the office and home, we also accommodate flexible working requests (e.g. 9‑day fortnights).
• Exclusive discounts – Generous discounts with wide range of companies covering leisure, technology, travel, personal finance, fashion and supermarkets.
• Professional fees – Social work colleagues have their annual Social Work England membership fees reimbursed.
• Car leasing schemes – We have our own scheme for colleagues that travel a significant number of business miles, as well as an open scheme through a third party.

Wellbeing

The wellbeing of our colleagues is something we are truly passionate about, as demonstrated by everyone having four dedicated, additional days per year when they are encouraged to spend time focusing on their health and wellbeing. Colleagues can also have a health and wellbeing cash plan, for which Cafcass pays the basic premium (you can upgrade to include family members), which allows them to claim back some costs of routine health expenses, including dental check‑ups, eye tests, physiotherapy sessions and more. Overall, we foster a holistic approach to supporting our colleagues, benefitting physical, mental and financial health. This is led by a dedicated in‑house team, the benefits of which include meaning support is targeted and specific to what colleagues need. Our team can also offer support and guidance when it comes to specific health conditions, such as neuro‑diverse conditions, cancer and the menopause. Our wellbeing offer is further strengthened by an external Employee Assistance Provider (EAP) which provides a free confidential support service 24 hours a day. This means access to clinical and professional expertise which gives you a chance to talk about all kinds of work and personal issues. If this wasn't enough, we are especially proud that over 125 colleagues have completed training and receive ongoing support to act as Health and Wellbeing Champions. Furthermore, we have nearly 100 people that have trained to be Mental Health Allies.

Next Steps / Timelines

If and when you are ready to apply, our application process is straightforward and quick to complete. You don't need to complete your application in a single visit, you can start it and come back and amend your responses / update your CV, just make sure you come back before the closing date to submit. Below we have given you an indication of a timetable we are hoping to work towards, although dates are subject to change. Closing date, we know if you join us you want to be rewarded in a variety of ways, including time away from work to spend time with those important to you, manage your financial present and future, whilst also be trusted to manage your work/life balance.

The advertised salary reflects our 2024/25 pay award. We are awaiting confirmation of our 2025/26 when salaries will be updated to reflect this.