We’ve created a new strategic role, which will be crucial in driving forward our improvement work and delivering the best possible outcomes for children and young people.

At South Gloucestershire Council we’re not where we want to be. But we’re clear what changes and improvements we need to make, and our senior leaders and councillors are committed to investing in us to make it happen. In this strategic role as Service Director for Quality Assurance, Strategic Safeguarding and Commissioning you’ll be central to those plans. 

It is a broad and challenging role in which you’ll play a leading role in helping us deliver on one of our key priorities: ‘Creating the best start in life for our children and young people’. Your remit will be to drive forward change and transformation across a spectrum of services leading to improved outcomes for children and families.

You’ll provide strategic and operational leadership to review and deliver an effective quality assurance and children’s commissioning function. And you’ll take the lead on planning and delivering key elements of our Council response to the Care Review, which will shape future strategies within the wider provision of children’s services.

What will you be doing? 

Yours is a crucial role in ensuring we deliver strong social work which best supports children, carers and families. You’ll have a strong team working with you, helping bring together colleagues, partners, children, young people and their families together to champion the very best outcomes.

• From significant investment and a council wide restructure, you will create a new team, bringing together staff from across the council to form one cohesive team. It will be your responsibility to develop, lead and oversee this new quality assurance function, with a strategic aim to embed quality improvements to ensure the bests outcomes for children, young people, and families.

• You will focus on embedding quality improvement, audit, risk management and monitoring systems and processes, ensuring that learning leads to improvements. This includes developing policies taking account of national and local context to ensure safe delivery of services that best meet the needs of children and families.

• Working with partners and stakeholders, you will commission high quality residential placements for children, working with the sector, both locally and further afield to ensure quality, safety and sufficiency of these placements. You will commission preventative activity to ensure we take the opportunity to provide support at the earlier possible point for children and their families.

• Having oversight of Strategic Safeguarding, you will work with partners from across the Children’s Partnership and Safeguarding Adults boards, to implement and embed the national recommendations from the government following the National Child Safeguarding Practice review following the cases of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and Star Hobson.

• You will ensure we have efficient processes in place to promote effective engagement with and participation of children, young people and families. You will help us champion the voice of children and young people, enabling them to help us on our improvement journey.

What we need from you

• You will be an experienced and passionate leader, who wants to make positive change happen. You will be forward thinking, with the ability to look at the improvements required and provide outcomes-focused strategic thinking and oversight.

• You must be a qualified social worker with demonstrable understanding and knowledge of developing strategy and quality improvements. It is also essential that you have solid experience in Quality Assurance processes and Safeguarding.

• You will have established experience of delivering strategic policy direction and leadership, operational management and financial control. You will have substantial strategic leadership experience, providing depth and breadth of knowledge to act with credibility at this level both internally and externally. 
   

How a career at South Gloucestershire Council is different

We know our team work best when they have balance in their lives and we offer genuine flexibility to help them achieve that work/life balance. 

We value our staff as individuals, investing in their careers and we are recognised for the quality, breadth and depth of our training and development offer, which helps make the greatest long-term difference in work.  

As part of our benefits package you will receive generous annual leave (pro rata), employee wellbeing support and you will have access to a range of staff discounts, including eye tests, travel, shopping and leisure activities  
 

We recognise that our diverse team of skilled and dedicated people make us a great place to work. We welcome applications from everyone and ensure that individuals are selected, promoted, and developed on the basis of their merits and abilities.   

Our teams at South Gloucestershire Council are making a real difference to the lives of people who live, work and learn here.    

• We're building and shaping communities which people are proud of   
• We're working with the most vulnerable in our community to help them achieve what they want in life   
• We're investing in our schools to ensure every child and young person in South Gloucestershire achieves their full potential.     

We've achieved a great deal, but we need talented and dedicated people to ensure we continue to make a difference.   

We’re making a difference, be part of it!    

Interviews: Interviews will be held on Wednesday, 13 July and successful candidates will then need to attend a members panel interview on Monday, 18 July. 

For more information, or an informal, confidential discussion, please contact Chris Sivers - Director of Children's Adults and Heath - chris.sivers@southglos.gov.uk