Directorate - Children and Young People's Services

Permanent, 37 hours per week, Full Time

This is a key role that offers the right candidate an exciting opportunity to develop their career with Rotherham Council Children and Young People’s Service. Help us to achieve our ambition to become outstanding and be part of our improvement journey and the transformational changes that we are making. We are committed to making sure that every child makes the best start in life and we are striving to become a child-centred borough. Rotherham is a great place to live and work – so, come and join us.

We are a seeking skilled, talented and inspirational social work professional who can:

-       Innovate to help re-define Children and Young People’s Services

-       Promote ‘Signs of Safety’ as a strengths-based approach to building safety and family resilience

-       Develop meaningful relationships with staff via extensive learning and development opportunities, including coaching and mentoring

-       Add value and make the most of available resources

About the opportunity

Our vision is for the children and families of Rotherham to routinely experience and describe the services they receive from us, as outstanding. We intend to do that by putting the child first in everything we do and investing in providing quality learning and development programmes for all our staff.

Within the context of a new leadership team, an increasingly stable and permanent workforce and innovative best-practice improvement and transformation programmes, you will play a vital role in building our performance culture providing leadership, direction and support that is rewarding in every sense, for every member of staff.

We are now offering a fantastic opportunity to lead our Learning & Development Team. This team combines quality assurance activities with responsive and dynamic learning and development programmes and opportunities. These are delivered as part of an innovative Learning Academy, a structured career pathway and include the implementation of methodological approaches, such as Signs of Safety and Restorative Practice.

Making such a significant investment in time, money and resources, and taking such a pro-active approach to developing our people, demonstrates how serious we are about our staff being the best they can be in order to provide excellent services for local children, young people and their families.

Team Manager - Learning and Development

The Team Manager Learning and Development is responsible for carrying out the day-to-day leadership and management of the Learning and Development Team, supervising their work and performance and ensuring that learning and development is embedded throughout the Children & Young People’s Service.

The team consists of very skilled and experienced non-case holding practitioners who are responsible for the induction, development and supervision of Newly Qualified Social Workers (NQSW) completing their Assessed and Supported Year in Employment (ASYE). A key element of their role is to provide targeted and bespoke learning and development support to enable NQSWs to complete a Portfolio of Evidence and achieve accreditation. In addition, they support, develop, coach and mentor all social work staff throughout their career pathway and are responsible for researching, designing, co-producing and facilitating a range of creative and innovative learning and development interventions to improve practice skills and improvements.

About you

We are keen to attract applicants who:

·       Are a qualified social worker with extensive experience of field social work

·       Have a thorough knowledge of multi-agency working

·       Understand responsibilities of different professionals in this area of work

·       Can be a strategic thinker but also a practical problem-solver

·       Can think on your feet, and be agile enough to step in quickly when you need to

·       Are able to prioritise, set the pace and sometimes make tough decisions

·       Are passionate about maximising a child’s life chances

·       Are passionate, with colleagues and local children, young people and their families 

·       Are enlightened, flexible and open to new ways of doing things

·       Will care

If you would like to find out more about this role please contact Carol Sibley, PCFSW and Service Manager - Quality, Learning and Development by e-mail at carol.sibley@rotherham.gov.uk in the first instance.

Closing date: 28.05.25.

Shortlist on 29.05.25.

Interviews on: 05.06.25 and 06.06.25