Service Manager: Adoption and Permanency

Staffordshire Local Enterprise Partnership; Stafford; On-site; GBP 50,000 - 64,000; Full time

Job summary

Staffordshire County Council is seeking a Service Manager for Adoption and Permanency to lead the adoption, kinship and permanence services, ensuring safe and legally secure family arrangements for children. You will drive improvement through audits, data, and multi-agency collaboration, shaping service design and outcome-focused practice.

You will oversee performance, budgets and risk while championing the voices of children and families, ensuring timely, high-quality permanency planning and

Qualifications

• A recognised degree-level qualification and registration as a Social Worker.
• Significant management experience within children's social care services, including multi-agency environments.
• Extensive knowledge of adoption, permanence and kinship care legislation, policy and best practice.
• Experience of managing adoption support and kinship support services, including assessment, therapeutic interventions and support arrangements.
• Proven experience of leading service improvement, operational planning and change programmes.
• Strong leadership, partnership-working and performance management skills, with experience of budget management and quality assurance.

Responsibilities

• Lead and develop adoption, kinship and permanence services to ensure children achieve safe, stable and legally secure family arrangements.
• Drive continuous improvement through quality assurance, performance monitoring and learning from audits, feedback and inspections.
• Build strong partnerships with regional adoption agencies, health services, education, legal professionals and community organisations to support effective permanence planning.
• Provide leadership, support and challenge to managers and practitioners, fostering a culture of reflective practice, accountability and continuous learning.
• Oversee service performance, operational risk, budgets and resources to ensure effective and sustainable service delivery.
• Champion the voices of children, adoptive families and kinship carers, ensuring their experiences help shape service design and development.
• Undertake the Agency Decision Maker (ADM) responsibilities.

Education

Social Worker degree and registration

Job description

The following content displays a map of the jobs location - Staffordshire Place 1, Stafford

Service Manager: Adoption and Permanency

Job Reference staffscc/TP/78/4864

Number of Positions:

1

Contract Type:

Permanent Full time

Working Hours:

37

Location:

Closing Date:

06/11/2026

Job Category:

Children's Services

Directorate:

Children and Families

Business Unit:

Children's Services

Job Introduction

Are you an experienced social work leader with a passion for helping children achieve safe, stable and loving homes? This is an exciting opportunity to lead adoption and permanency services, driving high-quality practice and ensuring children experience a strong sense of belonging through timely and secure family arrangements.

Working across adoption, kinship and permanence planning services, you will play a pivotal role in shaping excellent outcomes for children, families and carers.

Our Children and Families services and our vision here in Staffordshire is rooted in four core principles that underpin everything we do:

• Families first – network and community always
• Right help, right time – proportionate, timely and co-produced with children and families
• Whole-system responsibility for supporting children and families to be happy, healthy and safe
• Permanence as belonging from day one

To achieve our ambition, we have taken a bold decision to transform our service structure and we’re looking for talented, values-driven leaders who can champion these principles, inspire others and help shape the future of Children and Families services in Staffordshire.

We want to create a more resilient, child-centred and future-focused system that enables children, young people and families to receive the right help at the right time.

Through this redesign, we are strengthening leadership, increasing capacity and creating clearer lines of accountability across our services. These changes will support high-quality practice, stronger partnerships and better outcomes for children and families, while ensuring we are well positioned to respond to national reforms and future challenges.

Main Responsibilities

As Service Manager, you will provide operational leadership across adoption and permanency services, ensuring children achieve lasting, positive outcomes through effective planning, high-quality support and strong partnership working. You will lead service improvement, champion excellent practice and ensure services are delivered in line with statutory requirements and quality standards.

You will:

• Lead and develop adoption, kinship and permanence services to ensure children achieve safe, stable and legally secure family arrangements.
• Drive continuous improvement through quality assurance, performance monitoring and learning from audits, feedback and inspections.
• Build strong partnerships with regional adoption agencies, health services, education, legal professionals and community organisations to support effective permanence planning.
• Provide leadership, support and challenge to managers and practitioners, fostering a culture of reflective practice, accountability and continuous learning.
• Oversee service performance, operational risk, budgets and resources to ensure effective and sustainable service delivery.
• Champion the voices of children, adoptive families and kinship carers, ensuring their experiences help shape service design and development.
• Undertake the Agency Decision Maker (ADM) responsibilities.

The Ideal Candidate

The minimum criteria that will be used to shortlist for this role will be:

• A recognised degree-level qualification and registration as a Social Worker.
• Significant management experience within children's social care services, including multi-agency environments.
• Extensive knowledge of adoption, permanence and kinship care legislation, policy and best practice.
• Experience of managing adoption support and kinship support services, including assessment, therapeutic interventions and support arrangements.
• Proven experience of leading service improvement, operational planning and change programmes.
• Strong leadership, partnership-working and performance management skills, with experience of budget management and quality assurance.

Interviews will be held in person - date to be confirmed.

About Staffordshire County Council

We are no ordinary county council:

Our Values:

The core of who we are as an organisation. Just like we all have personal values that shape our thoughts and behaviour, organisational values drive how we think and act collectively.

Our values were created and shaped by colleague feedback and national best practice and they sit at the heart of People Strategy:

We have a real sense of community spirit that brings our people together. This feeling of belonging means we are all connected to what we do and take pride in the difference we make every day for Staffordshire people. We are ambitious and our sights are set firmly on a better future.

We look forward and race ahead - that goes for your career too.

We recognise that it is our employees that are central to everything we do. We aim to create a supportive working environment where employees can achieve their full potential and achieve a healthy work-life balance.

As an Authority we are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people/vulnerable adults and expect all staff and volunteers to share this commitment.

Staffordshire County Council is an equal opportunities organisation and Disability Confident employer. We encourage applications from all background and communities

As part of our commitment as a Disability Confident employer, a Gold Award Armed Forces employer and our commitment to supporting care leavers - we offer a guaranteed interview as long as yourapplication meets the minimum criteria for the post.

As part of our commitment as a Disability Confident employer, a Gold Award Armed Forces employer and our commitment to supporting care leavers - we offer a guaranteed interview as long as yourapplication meets the minimum criteria for the post.

As part of our commitment as a Disability Confident employer, a Gold Award Armed Forces employer and our commitment to supporting care leavers - we offer a guaranteed interview as long as yourapplication meets the minimum criteria for the post.

As part of our commitment as a Disability Confident employer, a Gold Award Armed Forces employer and our commitment to supporting care leavers - we offer a guaranteed interview as long as yourapplication meets the minimum criteria for the post.