‘Making history, building communities’

We have a fantastic city which provides a great place to live for many of our residents - our heritage is world renowned, our culture is unique and our economy is strong. We are proud of York’s status as one of the safest and best cities to live in the UK, protecting and engaging our 200,000 residents and 7 million visitors alike.

York has been nationally and internationally recognised as a Human Rights City and UNESCO City of Media Arts. The EU cultural and creative cities monitor reports that York is the “most culturally vibrant” city in the UK and it has a widely recognised status as one of the best places to live in the UK. We also have strengths as a science city, and our digital infrastructure recognises us as the UK’s first Gigabit City.

We have a highly skilled workforce, and York’s strong education system has two excellent colleges and two world-class universities. Ofsted recently judged 95% of primary and 78% of secondary schools to be good or outstanding. This enables most of our children and young people to reach levels of attainment above the national average, and the city’s residents have the highest levels of graduate skills in the North.

The People Directorate are ambitious for residents of York; developing whole life and whole system services, an asset and strengths based approach supporting children and adults now and in the future. We are determined to help make sure we keep our most vulnerable residents safe at the same time as giving them the best life possible.

The majority of our children feel safe and supported, going to good or outstanding schools giving them the best life chances. However, we know this is not the case for everyone nor for every child, this is where you come in; to further our ambition for all residents in the York region.

You will work in partnership with others, especially within the health sector, to ensure our services are better integrated, good quality and value for money, so that we can improve the wellbeing, outcomes and life chances for York residents, a truly place shaping role.

You will be the corporate champion for both vulnerable adults as well as children, with a focus on ensuring we drive continuous improvement to a standard, which is recognised within regulatory frameworks, ensuring we are always inspection ready. You will be comfortable dealing with complex cases and managing risk, finding innovative solutions to social care, and a relentless drive on continuous performance improvement.

Your positivity, ingenuity and motivation, inspires and unites your service, partners and stakeholders to bring about positive change and continuous improvement.

We are looking for a Corporate Director of People who can deliver outstanding results in relation to social care, and also work in a collaborative way across the whole Council.  

The Director of People is crucial in helping to improve the future for both Adults and Children in our City. We are looking for a robust leader who has a passion for driving change, forming collaborative partnerships and influencing key stakeholders.

We welcome applications from leaders who are experienced in Adult’s and/or Children’s social care, whether you are an experienced DCS/DASS leader looking to lead a whole lifecycle approach here in York, or someone looking to step up to their first Director role.

To be successful you will be technically strong, well grounded, resilient; able to manage risk robustly to provide your service with calm, assured leadership.

You will be a real ambassador for your service, the council, the city of York and its citizens.

If you are interested in joining our team and are inspired to lead the next phase of our journey, we look forward to your application. We encourage you to explore your interest with our recruitment partners at The Resourcing Solution to learn a little more.