Early Help Manager

London Borough of Newham; Greater London; On-site; GBP 52,000 - 56,000; Full time

Job summary

The London Borough of Newham is seeking an Early Help Manager for a fixed-term 12-month contract. This role involves managing a team to provide effective early help services, ensuring quality assessments and interventions for families. The successful candidate will have a recognized social work qualification and experience in multi-agency collaboration to improve outcomes for children and families.

Qualifications

• Experienced in managing caseloads for Early Help teams.
• Well-versed in principles of Early Help and Family Help.
• Ability to build effective multi-agency relationships.

Responsibilities

• Manage a locality team of Early Help Practitioners.
• Ensure qualitative assessments and family plans are progressed.
• Influence improved outcomes for children and families.

Skills

Management

Multi-agency collaboration

Systemic practice

Relational supervision

Education

Recognized Social Work Qualification & Registration

Equivalent qualifications (youth work, teaching, probation)

Job description

Early Help Manager
This role is fixed term contract for a period of 12 months
Starting salary of £52,584 - £55,620

The closing date for receipt of your applications is 01/06/25, however, interest in these jobs may be high and we therefore reserve the right to close the vacancy early.

You will be notified if your application has been successful, we are aiming to shortlist W/B 02/06/25 and schedule interviews between 09/06/25 and 27/06/25. We thank you for your interest.

We are Newham

We are a vibrant, dynamic, culturally rich East London Borough with a young population and limitless potential. We are a challenging yet rewarding place to work, with the networks in place to enable you to be the best Practitioner that you can be and make a real difference to our children and families. Our social care services were rated to be GOOD overall by Ofsted, with leadership rated as OUTSTANDING, but we have not stopped striving to be better.

We’ve been working tirelessly to establish a Centre of Excellence for Children’s Services through investment, co-production and by continuously developing our 'Circles of Support' practice model; centring on systemic and restorative practice and a specialist support offer for our Practitioners. Ofsted described Newham as having a positive culture of learning and development and we’d love for you to learn and grow with us.

About the job

We are seeking an experienced Manager who will have line management and (systemic and relational) supervisory responsibility and efficiently manage caseloads for a locality team of Early Help and Senior Early Help Practitioners, ensuring qualitative assessments and family plans, alongside planned purposeful and focused interventions are progressed in accordance with Early Help pathways, and informed by tried and tested methodologies including multi-systemic principles and social learning theory. Build and sustain effective multi-agency relationships with locality partners that will influence improved outcomes for children and families around a team around the family model that adheres to the principles of ‘one family one plan’.

We are seeking candidates who are experienced and well versed in ethos and principles of delivering Early Help. However, with the advent of Family Help; wrap around multi-disciplinary whole family support at earliest opportunity, pivotal role of Lead Practitioner, principle of one family one plan that will flex as needs of children and family change, and closer alignment between targeted Early Help and Child in Need (Section 17) we would particularly welcome applications from candidates who hold a recognised Social Work Qualification & Registration with Social Work England and/or equivalent qualification, such as youth work, teaching, probation, therapeutic, etc, as stipulated in person specification.

To find out more and prepare your application please see JD here

For an informal discussion about the posts, please contact Fran Craven at [e-mail] Dawn Henry at [e-mail]

About Us

Early Help and Prevention Services in Newham are undergoing a transformation to ensure that we offer timely and dynamic joined up support to children and families.

Our primary aims are early detection and identification of children and family’s needs, offering ‘the right support at the right time’ to mitigate against escalation of children’s needs and risks by supporting families to avoid crisis through earlier identification, targeted support, safety and contingency planning.

We adopt the role of Lead Practitioner, offering planned purposeful and focused targeted interventions, our aim being to reduce volume of referrals to child protection services, and in accordance with Newham’s Early help strategy, to improve children's long-term outcomes around health and education, improved emotional wellbeing, ensuring that children and young people can feel safe and thrive in their communities.

Our transformed targeted Early Help Service will see four newly configured teams, comprising of an Early Help Manager, and a mix of Early Help, and Senior Early Help Practitioners aligned with Newham’s four locality Family Hubs networks.

Family Hub’s provide a range of universal services from conception to 18 years (up to 25 years if young person has additional needs). This is inclusive of a strong start for life offer, supporting child and parent through each developmental stage.

Changes within Early Help will align with wider context of proposed Family Help model and Families First Partnership reforms (March 2025).

We are recruiting to a number of positions in the Early Help space:

Please view JD here

IMPORTANT: If you are an LBN member of staff and applying for this role as a secondment you should note that secondments are subject to the agreement of your current employing service. Please ensure that you inform your line manager of your intention to apply for the post in the first instance.

Additional Information

We are committed to creating an inclusive, anti-racist environment for all. When you apply for a job at Newham, your application is considered on its merits regardless of your age, disability, ethnicity, faith, gender identity or sexual orientation. If you share our vision and values, and you bring the experience and skills we need, that’s all that matters to us.

The London Borough of Newham has important responsibilities for safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults. If you are appointed to a job that involves working with these groups, you may be subject to a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check.

Please attach your supporting statement, explaining in no more than x2 A4 sides why and how you meet the criteria for this role.

We practice anonymised recruitment. Please ensure that you remove all personal information from any documents that you upload.

The personal information we have collected from you will be shared with Cifas who will use it to prevent fraud, other unlawful or dishonest conduct, malpractice, and other seriously improper conduct. If any of these are detected you could be refused certain services or employment. Your personal information will also be used to verify your identity. Further details of how your information will be used by us and Cifas, and your data protection rights, can be found by https://www.cifas.org.uk/fpn.

The London Borough of Newham is a Disability Confident employer. Candidates who declare that they have a disability in accordance with the Equality Act 2010 and meet the essential criteria as specified in the Job Profile will be guaranteed an interview.

Priority consideration on all advertised roles will be given to London Borough of Newham Redeployees.