Team Manager

West Sussex County Council; Chichester; Hybrid; GBP 60,000 - 65,000; Full time

Job summary

A local government authority in Chichester is seeking a Team Manager for its Family Safeguarding Service. This pivotal role entails leading a team of social workers, ensuring the safeguarding of children and young people, and contributing to robust service strategies. Applicants should possess significant experience in social work, excellent leadership skills, and a relevant qualification. The position offers a salary range of £60,562 to £64,711 per annum and supports flexible working arrangements.

Benefits

Excellent local government pension scheme

Generous holiday entitlement of 30 days

Flexible working options

Training and development opportunities

Health and wellbeing benefits

Qualifications

• Ability to provide comprehensive professional advice within the service.
• Experience in dealing with complex child protection matters.
• Registration with the relevant professional registration body.

Responsibilities

• Lead, motivate, and manage a team of social workers.
• Provide expert supervision, mentoring, and coaching.
• Develop service strategies and drive best practices.

Skills

Excellent interpersonal and communication skills

Effective people and performance management

Emotional intelligence/resilience

Experience in complex child protection

Ability to manage limited resources

Education

Degree in Social Work

Recognised post qualifying award in Social Work

Job description

About the Role

Salary: Hay A - £60,562 to £64,711 per annum (includes 10% market rate supplement)
Contract Type: Permanent

Working Pattern: Full time - 37 hours per week (Hybrid working available)
Location: Bognor Regis (County Hall, Chichester in the interim) with countywide travel

We have an exciting career opportunity to join our Family Safeguarding West Services as a Team Manager. You'll play a pivotal role in ensuring children and young people are safeguarded and protected while demonstrating great leadership, excellent practice and robust support for both services.

We are currently looking to recruit a Team Manager for our Family Safeguarding Service. As Team Manager you will lead, motivate, nurture, and manage a team of social workers and supporting team. You will provide expert supervision, mentoring, and coaching to foster reflective and relationship‑based practice within your team. Additionally, you will contribute to the development of service strategies and actively drive best practices in safeguarding. Your safeguarding expertise will be essential in ensuring excellent standards in assessments, annual reporting, and support for foster carers and children. You will lead and help develop awareness campaigns while maintaining a strong presence in national forums to represent West Sussex County Council (WSCC). Please note that there is also the possibility that the post holder in this role may need to take on the responsibility for the Local Authority's Private Fostering Service.

We are looking for a candidate with strong leadership potential who is eager to inspire, motivate, and support a team by cultivating a positive environment. Additionally, you shall be passionate about safeguarding children and have experience working with kinship and foster carers. You should be able to manage and balance multiple responsibilities effectively while meeting deadlines and maintaining high standards of practice. Collaboration with other team managers and sharing knowledge will be key as you support each other's duties when needed and contribute to our ongoing improvement Ofsted journey.

How We Support You

As an employer we recognise that it is our employees that are central to everything we do. We aim to create a supportive and dynamic working environment where employees can achieve their full potential, achieve a healthy work-life balance and are rewarded for the work they do. Upon joining us you will have access to a range of benefits including:

• an excellent local government pension scheme
• generous holiday entitlement of 30 days (plus opportunity to buy additional leave)
• a range of flexible working options, depending on your job role
• maternity, paternity, dependency and adoption leave
• volunteering opportunities
• training and development opportunities, including coaching and mentoring
• a range of discounts giving our staff access to hundreds of offers; groceries, travel, cinema tickets, days out, leisure activities, high street retailers and the opportunity to save over £1,000 a year through our West Sussex Choices benefits platform
• health and wellbeing benefits including access to our Employee Assistance Programme, Mental Health First Aiders and Voluntary Health Cash Plans

For a full list this can be found at our Rewards and Benefits page.

About You

Some of the key skills and experience/qualifications we are looking for:

• The ability to provide comprehensive professional advice and support within the service specialism, including tackling difficult problems of a technical, professional, resource or people related nature.
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills. This will include the ability to develop effective long‑term relationships both with other teams across WSCC and external partners enabling the achievement of high‑quality outcomes.
• Effective people and performance management skills and the ability to provide direction and motivate the team to deliver quality professional practice.
• Understands the need for emotional intelligence/resilience, specifically in relation to risk.
• A recognised Social Work qualification and certificate e.g. Degree in Social Work, Post Graduate.
• A recognised post qualifying award in Social Work or demonstrable evidence of continuous professional development at a similar level.
• Registration with the relevant professional registration body and maintaining
  registration with that body.
• Experience in dealing with significant issues, for example management of complex child protection matters, staff under performance, managing resources to address team performance priorities through allocation of limited resources.
• Expert relevant experience in specialist area, including sound relevant operational experience in social work, ideally working as a senior practitioner or small team leader/supervisor.
• Experience of managing a small budget and/or contributing to financially related decisions on larger spends, how cost‑effective decisions are made and operating within the financial constraints.

For full list of key skills and experience / qualifications please see our job description attached.

About WSCC

Here at West Sussex County Council, we are ambitious for our children and our workforce. We have made great improvements in our service for the children and families in West Sussex over 5 years. You will join us as at a key time on our continuous improvement journey; the service you would be joining has a stable workforce with manageable caseloads and a fully permanent management team. We are proud of the work we do and we are proud to be a support and inclusive employer.

That's why we need professionals, like you, who really want to be part of the positive change that is happening for children. Be part of an ambitious ongoing improvement plan and make a significant difference to children and families in West Sussex. There has never been a more rewarding time to join.

For further information about us and about working in Children's Social Care at West Sussex County Council, please visit Careers in children's social work in West Sussex.

Further Information

The reference number for this role is CAFHE06103.

For an informal conversation or for further information regarding the role, please contact Moira Keen (Service Manager) at . For issues or queries regarding your application please contact .

To apply, please follow the links below to upload your CV and Cover Letter. In your cover letter please outline your motivations for applying and explaining the skills and experience you can bring to the role (please refer to the key skills) ensuring that any gaps in employment are covered in your CV. Please ensure you have saved the job description attached to the main advert on our website as, once the job has closed, you may not have the opportunity to download again.

EEO Statement

We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults. This post is subject to Social Work England registration, an enhanced DBS check, 5 years referencing and a health check.

Equity, inclusion and accessibility is very important to West Sussex County Council. We welcome and encourage applications from everyone, as this helps us build a diverse and talented workforce, that reflects the communities we serve. We ensure our approach to recruitment is flexible and supportive to enable all applicants to be at their best and to ensure they have the best possible chance of success.

We operate a guaranteed interview scheme for applicants that have a disability, are a veteran or are a care leaver. More information can be found on our application help page.