Assistant Service Manager

Cafcass (Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service); Plymouth; Hybrid; GBP 42,000 - 52,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Wellbeing support

Hybrid work model

Job summary

Cafcass is seeking an Assistant Service Manager for the Plymouth area. You will lead a team of Family Court Advisers, ensuring safeguarding and high-quality practice standards while upholding the organisation's values.

The role supports flexible and hybrid working, reflecting our commitment to staff wellbeing and diverse backgrounds. You will supervise, coach, and mentor social workers, promote resilience, and communicate effectively with colleagues and children.

Qualifications

• Must be registered with Social Work England.
• Experience supervising, coaching, or mentoring social workers.
• Excellent oral and written communication with emotional intelligence.

Responsibilities

• Manage a team of Family Court Advisers.
• Reflect and champion the Practice Framework 'Together with Children and Families'.
• Safeguard and promote welfare of children.
• Provide high-quality reflective case supervision.
• Ensure quality and impact of practice standards.

Skills

Team management

Mentoring

Coaching

Communication

Emotional intelligence

Education

Social Work England registration

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.

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.