Assistant Service Manager

Cafcass (Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service); West Yorkshire; Hybrid; GBP 42,000 - 60,000; Full time

Job summary

Cafcass is recruiting an Assistant Service Manager for the Public and Private Law teams covering West Yorkshire. You will lead a team of Family Court Advisers, shaping practice in line with our Together with Children and Families framework and safeguarding standards.

You’ll work in a hybrid model, balancing office and remote collaboration to support children in the family court system. You’ll be registered with Social Work England, be organised and resilient, with supervision or mentoring

Qualifications

• Registered with Social Work England.
• Organised and resilient with good communication.
• Experience supervising, coaching, or mentoring social workers.

Responsibilities

• Manage a team of Family Court Advisers.
• Provide reflective case supervision and uphold practice standards.
• Safeguard and promote welfare of children in line with Cafcass policies.
• Champion the Together with Children and Families framework in daily practice.

Job description

We are recruiting for the role of Assistant Service Manager in our Public and Private Law team(s) covering the West Yorkshire. 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 West Yorkshire, 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.

Closing Dates

• Closing Date – 6th September 2026
• Initial Interview – 11th & 14th September 2026
• Final Interview – 23rd September 2026

We understand you may benefit from finding out more to help you decide to apply. 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 contact either Narinder Kaur at [e-mail] from our HR Resourcing team if your query is to do with the recruitment process or is HR-related, or Katy Sanderson, at [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.

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.