We are looking for an experienced, ambitious and motivated Service Manager to help lead and shape our newly established Family Help service in Kirklees. This is an exciting opportunity to be part of a developing service shaped by the Department for Education’s Families First reforms, focused on providing the right help to children and families at the earliest opportunity, strengthening multi-agency working and supporting families to stay safely together wherever possible.

About the role

Reporting to the Head of Service, you will be part of the wider service management team and will have responsibility for leading and developing Family Help teams across Kirklees. You will provide strong, visible and effective leadership to Team Managers, Practice Supervisors, Social Workers and Family Help Practitioners, ensuring that children, young people and families receive timely, proportionate and high-quality support.

You will play a key role in embedding the new Family Help offer, ensuring that practice is relationship-based, evidence-informed and focused on improving outcomes for children and families. Safeguarding will remain central to your leadership role, alongside early intervention, prevention, whole-family working and effective risk management.

As Service Manager, you will be instrumental in shaping services, leading improvement, responding to changes in legislation and practice, and ensuring that performance, quality assurance, audit activity and learning are used effectively to strengthen practice. You will be accountable for service delivery, performance and resource management, ensuring services are fit for purpose and able to demonstrate impact against national and local indicators.

What you will be doing

• Providing strategic and operational leadership across Family Help teams, ensuring high-quality, child-focused and family-centred practice.
• Line managing Team Managers and supporting them to lead confident, effective and resilient teams.
• Embedding the Family Help model as part of the wider Families First reforms, promoting earlier help, stronger assessment and effective multi-agency planning.
• Ensuring safeguarding, risk analysis and decision making are robust, timely and proportionate.
• Using performance information, audit findings, quality assurance activity and feedback from children and families to identify strengths, address gaps and drive service improvement.
• Developing strong partnerships across education, health, police, early years, voluntary and community services and wider Council services to deliver joined-up support.
• Ensuring employees are supported, skilled and equipped to deliver effective services, with a strong focus on supervision, professional development, wellbeing and resilience.
• Managing change confidently and creatively, balancing risk while supporting teams to embed new ways of working.
• Contributing to strategic planning, service development, budget management and the delivery of local and national priorities.
• Promoting a culture of learning, accountability and continuous improvement across the service.

About you

We are looking for a qualified and Social Work England registered social worker with significant post-qualifying experience in children and families work and substantial experience at a managerial level. You will have a strong understanding of safeguarding, child protection, early help, assessment, planning and relevant legislation, alongside the ability to lead services in a complex and changing environment.

You will be an effective, visible and relational leader who can inspire confidence, provide clear direction and create the conditions for practitioners and managers to do their best work. You will bring strong communication, analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to manage complex situations across services, partner agencies and organisational boundaries.

You will have experience of managing employees, budgets, resources, performance and complex service issues, including complaints and HR matters. You will be confident in using data, quality assurance and professional judgement to support timely decision making, address underperformance where required and ensure learning is shared and embedded.

Most importantly, you will be committed to making a positive difference to the lives of children, young people and families in Kirklees. You will model the Council’s behaviours and expectations by being positive, honest, respectful, flexible, communicative and supportive.

Why join us?

This is a unique opportunity to help shape a new Family Help offer for children and families in Kirklees at an important point of service development. You will be joining a committed leadership team with the opportunity to influence practice, strengthen partnership working and contribute to a more integrated, family-centred system of help and protection.

At Kirklees, we want to be innovative, creative and ambitious in the way we work with children, families and communities. We are proud of our workforce and committed to supporting managers and practitioners through effective supervision, learning, development and a strong culture of collaboration and continuous improvement.

Additional information

You must hold a recognised social work qualification and be registered with Social Work England. This post requires an enhanced DBS check, barred list check and the ability to travel across Kirklees for work purposes. Some work outside normal office hours may be required.

For recruitment purposes, candidates will need to address all of the points in the Person Checklist in order to be considered for this role. CVs will not be accepted.

For an informal discussion please contact Adele Herdsman, Head of Service Adele.herdsman@kirklees.gov.uk