Team Manager Safeguarding

Become a Somerset Team Manager – where you care and we care.

Somerset is amongst the top performing local authorities for services to children in the Southwest, after being officially rated ‘Good’ by Ofsted.

There’s never been a better time to join Somerset….

You will be leading a team supporting families through Child In Need Plans and Child Protection Plans, and families in legal proceedings.

Our promise to you…

• A positive workplace culture
• A commitment to your CPD through a bespoke learning and development programme
• Clear career pathways
• Regular, quality, reflective supervision, and learning
• A supportive management and leadership team

You will be joining a permanent management team, including some experienced colleagues and some who are at the beginning of their management career. You will join a team where we are all about relationship-based and strengths-based management, and where Team Managers work together across the service to provide an excellent service to families, and support and develop our teams. You’ll be encouraged to be an autonomous manager, but you’ll be supported all the way by your colleagues and your line manager.

Your team will be working with children experiencing or at risk of exploitation, with families where parents’ learning needs are having a significant impact, with children who have suffered a non-accidental injury, and with families where sexual risk or harm is the primary concern.

You will work closely with our part-time Wider Safeguarding Team Manager to manage the team of 6 social workers. Our team is predominantly permanently staffed, with a mix of experienced and newly qualified workers. The team pride themselves on a strong learning culture and on their ethos of mutual support. The team have had good feedback in our recent Ofsted inspection and team diagnostics about the quality of their work, and about their team culture.

You might be someone with some supervisory experience who’s looking to step up into your first management role, or you might be someone who has management experience already who is looking for a change. You will be passionate about relationship-based social work, proud of your profession, and able to reflect and think creatively about how to support your team and contribute to the organisation as a whole. You will need to be a qualified social worker registered with Social Work England and have substantial experience working with children and families in social work.

We recognise the importance of a good balance between work and home life so we do everything we can to accommodate flexible working including some working from home, compressed hours, job shares and other arrangements. Please just let us know in your application or at any stage throughout the process (and beyond) if these are options you’d like to explore.

We provide a great range of benefits to reward and thank our Social Workers. Click to see the full list of what we can offer you

Got a question about becoming a Social Worker with Somerset County Council? Feel free to get in touch with Sarah Collard-Baker, Recruitment and Engagement Officer, on sarah.collardbaker@somerset.gov.uk or 07469 413432.

Alternatively, to discuss this specific post, feel free to get in touch with Carrie Grant, Operations Manager, at carrie.grant@somerset.gov.uk or 07976 693481.

Anticipated interview date 27 March 2023.

From 1 April 2023 the County and District councils in Somerset will be replaced by a new single unitary authority – Somerset Council. It’s a genuinely exciting time to join us as we work together with the four district councils to deliver the new council for Somerset.

This post requires a criminal background check via the Disclosure procedure.