Children's Residential Team Leader

Surrey County Council; Elmbridge; On-site; GBP 37,000; Full time

Job summary

A local government authority in Elmbridge is seeking a Senior Practitioner to support children and young people in a residential setting. This role involves building relationships, guiding junior staff, and collaborating with multi-agency professionals. The successful candidate will have experience in children's residential care and a Level 3 Diploma in Residential Childcare. This position offers a salary of £36,873 per annum with additional benefits, including generous holiday allowances and a pension scheme.

Benefits

26 days holiday (increasing with service)

Local government pension scheme

Employee Assistance Programme

Qualifications

• Previous experience in Residential Children’s Care.
• Ability to establish positive relationships with children and families.
• Applied knowledge of children's safeguarding issues.

Responsibilities

• Support children in managing emotions and behaviors.
• Guide staff and junior members through mentoring.
• Collaborate with professionals for care planning.

Skills

Relationship building

Empathy

Risk management

Supervisory skills

Education

A Level 3 Diploma in Residential Childcare

Job description

Our Senior Practitioner role is one that is both structured and varied, where you’ll have a foot in two camps: Directly supporting our children and young people, building trusted relationships, and helping them manage their emotions and behaviours, process trauma, and navigate complex family dynamics. You’ll bring empathy, consistency, and resilience to your work – creating positive experiences filled with laughter, fun, and love, while helping our children and young people to develop healthy routines and coping strategies through meaningful activities including education and contributing to everyday life within the home. Supporting and guiding staff, you will use your previous experience and sense of personal authority, professionalism, and integrity to lead by example, helping team members to make safe, and informed decisions in sometimes challenging circumstances. You will work closely with management within the home to maintain a safe, nurturing environment and collaborate with multi‑agency professionals involved in the lives of our children and young people to contribute to meaningful care planning. You will guide junior members of the team acting as a mentor and sharing best practice, role‑modeling behaviours, creating respectful and confidential boundaries to work within, and inspiring them to grow by supporting them with their induction, training requirements, probation activity, and journey to gain their diplomas. This is a fantastic opportunity for someone ready to take their first step into leadership, without the full stretch and responsibility of a Deputy Manager role. We’ll support you to develop your own skills through training, regular supervision, and a personalised development plan, and the opportunity to gain your Level 5 qualification in Management and Leadership if that’s the path you choose, paving the way for future progression into more senior roles.

Surrey has both urban and rural areas and our residential workforce will be expected to have a valid driving licence to drive in the UK and access to a vehicle, to support our young people to attend appointments, activities or trips as agreed. Reasonable adjustments where needed will be made for successful applicants who have a disability or long‑term health condition to enable them to fulfil the requirements of the job.

Information for applicants on Local Government Reorganisation – Surrey County Council.

• Previous experience of working in Residential Children’s Care
• A Level 3 Diploma in Residential Childcare, or equivalent. You will have the option to work toward completing Level 5 in Management and Leadership
• Your ability to establish and maintain positive relationships with children, adolescents, their families, and other care professionals
• An applied knowledge of contextual children's safeguarding and associated issues
• Proven experience of multi‑agency working
• Skills in effective assessment, risk management, and strengths‑based care planning
• Experience of delivering statutory childcare services including the residential care of children and knowledge of the Children’s Homes Regulations 2015 and Quality Standards

In this role, you’ll be expected to provide supervision to more junior team members. While previous supervisory experience isn’t essential, you must be confident in offering guidance and support, and willing to take on this responsibility as part of your development. If you have transferable skills and experience of working in children’s services such as family support or placements, fostering, youth services or probation and prison services you may have developed skills that would align well to our Senior Practitioner role, and we would love to hear from you to understand how these could fit a role in our residential children’s services.

The starting salary for this role is £36,873 per annum for working 36 hours per week plus enhanced rates of pay for any weekends, bank holidays and sleep‑in duties. Are you ready to take the next step in your career in residential children’s care? We currently have an opportunity for a Senior Practitioner to join our Children’s Residential Home in Walton‑on‑Thames. If you are considering a move from the private children’s residential care sector, or another care background this role may more commonly be known as a Residential Team or Shift Leader. This is one of the best roles in our homes – offering a balance between direct work with our children and young people and the opportunity to contribute to the development of your team.

Our Offer to You

• 26 days holiday, rising to 28 days after 2 years’ service and 31 days after 5 years’ service
• Option to buy up to 10 days of additional annual leave
• A generous local government salary‑related pension
• Up to 5 days of carer’s leave and 2 paid volunteering days per year
• Paternity, adoption and dependents leave
• An Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) to support health and wellbeing
• Learning and development hub where you can access a wealth of resources
• Wellbeing and lifestyle discounts including gym, travel, and shopping
• A chance to make a real difference to the lives of our residents
• Please tell us about the skills and experience you have of providing children’s residential care?
• Please tell us about any experience you have of multi‑agency working and why this is important.
• The work we do is challenging (but rewarding). Using an example tell us about a time when you dealt with a challenging work situation effectively. What was the outcome and what did you learn from it?
• Working in our homes represents a unique opportunity to support our children and young people with their everyday lives. To do this safely you will be asked to tell us about any allergies you have that may need to be reasonably managed to ensure your safety and wellbeing with minimal impact to the children and young people we care for.