Surrey County Council
Children's Residential Team Leader
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The starting salary for this role is £38,090 per annum for working 36 hours per week plus enhanced rates of pay for weekends, bank holidays and sleep in duties.
Are you ready to take the next step in your career in residential children’s care?
We currently have an opportunity for a Senior Practitioner to join our Children’s Residential Home in Walton-on-Thames. If you are considering a move from the private children’s residential care sector, or another care background this role may more commonly be known as a Residential Team or Shift Leader.
This is one of the best roles in our homes — offering a balance between direct work with our children and young people and the opportunity to contribute to the development of your team.
Our Offer to You
- 26 days’ holiday, rising to 28 days after 2 years' service and 31 days after 5 years’ service
- Option to buy up to 10 days of additional annual leave
- A generous local government salary related pension
- Up to 5 days of carer’s leave and 2 paid volunteering days per year
- Paternity, adoption and dependents leave
- An Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) to support health and wellbeing
- Learning and development hub where you can access a wealth of resources
- Wellbeing and lifestyle discounts including gym, travel, and shopping
- A chance to make a real difference to the lives of our residents
Our Senior Practitioner role is one that is both structured and varied, where you’ll have a foot in two camps:
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Directly supporting our children and young people, building trusted relationships, and helping them manage their emotions and behaviours, process trauma, and navigate complex family dynamics. You’ll bring empathy, consistency, and resilience to your work — creating positive experiences filled with laughter, fun, and love, while helping our children and young people to develop healthy routines and coping strategies through meaningful activities including education and contributing to everyday life within the home.
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Supporting and guiding staff, you will use your previous experience and sense of personal authority, professionalism, and integrity to lead by example, helping team members to make safe, and informed decisions in sometimes challenging circumstances. You will work closely with management within the home to maintain a safe, nurturing environment and collaborate with multi-agency professionals involved in the lives of tour children and young people to contribute to meaningful care planning. You will guide junior members of the team acting as a mentor and sharing best practice, role modelling behaviours, creating respectful and confidential boundaries to work within, and inspiring them to grow by supporting them with their induction, training requirements, probation activity, and journey to gain their diplomas.
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This is a fantastic opportunity for someone ready to take their first step into leadership, without the full stretch and responsibility of a Deputy Manager role. We’ll support you to develop your own skills through training, regular supervision, and a personalised development plan, and the opportunity to gain your Level 5 qualification in Management and Leadership if that’s the path you choose, paving the way for future progression into more senior roles.
Your Application
In order to be considered for shortlisting, your application will clearly evidence the following skills and align with our behaviours:
- Previous experience of working in Residential Children's Care
- A Level 3 Diploma in Residential Childcare, or equivalent. You will have the option to work towards completing Level 5 in Management and Leadership
- Your ability to establish and maintain positive relationships with children, adolescents, their families, and other care professionals
- An applied knowledge of contextual children’s safeguarding and associated issues
- Proven experience of multi-agency working
- Skills in effective assessment, risk management, and strengths-based care planning
- Experience of delivering statutory childcare services including the residential care of children and knowledge of the Children’s Homes Regulations 2015 and Quality Standards
In this role, you’ll be expected to provide supervision to more junior team members. While previous supervisory experience isn’t essential, you must be confident in offering guidance and support, and willing to take on this responsibility as part of your development.
Due to our legal obligations, we can only accept applications from people 22 years old and above.
Surrey has both urban and rural areas and our residential workforce will be expected to have a valid driving licence to drive in the UK and access to a vehicle, to support our young people to attend appointments, activities or trips as agreed. Reasonable adjustments where needed will be made for successful applicants who have a disability or long-term health condition to enable them to fulfil the requirements of the job.
An enhanced DBS ‘Disclosure and Barring Service’ check for regulated activity (formerly known as CRB) and the Children’s and Adults’ Barred List checks will be required for this role.
If you have transferable skills and experience of working in children's services such as family support or placements, fostering, youth services or probation and prison services you may have developed skills that would align well to our Senior Practitioner role, and we would love to hear from you to understand how these could fit a role in our residential children's services.
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As part of your application, you will be asked to submit a CV and answer the following questions:
- Please tell us what has motivated you to apply for this role?
- Please tell us about the skills and experience you have of providing children’s residential care?
- Please tell us about any experience you have of multiagency working and why this is important.
- The work we do is challenging (but rewarding). Using an example tell us about a time when you dealt with a challenging work situation effectively. What was the outcome and what did you learn from it?
This advert closes at 23:59 on 23.08.2026 with interviews to follow.
Before submitting your application, we recommend you read the job description and our Life at Surrey Handbook to get an insight into working at Surrey.
We look forward to receiving your application, please click on the apply online button below to submit.
Contact Us
Please contact us for any questions relating to the role. This could be to discuss flexible working requests, transferable skills, or any barriers to employment. For an informal discussion please contact Sarah Muzzall by e-mail at residentialrecruitment@surreycc.gov.uk.
We are committed to the safe recruitment of staff in our Residential homes across Surrey therefore if you are successful in being offered a role within our service, we will work with you to collect all required checks in line with government guidance.
Local Government Reorganisation (LGR)
Surrey County Council is undergoing Local Government Reorganisation, moving from a two-tier system to two new unitary councils in April 2027. If you are employed by Surrey on 1st April 2027, your role will transfer with current terms and conditions to one of the new organisations, supporting local devolution and greater powers for our communities.
Join our dynamic team and shape the future of local government. Make a lasting impact with innovative solutions and improved services for our community. Help us build a brighter future for our residents! Please see more information here: Information for applicants on Local Government Reorganisation - Surrey County Council.
Our Commitment
We are a disability confident employer which means if you have shared a disability on your application form and have evidenced you meet the minimum shortlisting criteria as displayed on the advert, we guarantee you an interview.
Your skills and experience truly matter to us. From application to your first day, we’re committed to supporting you with any adjustments you need, we value inclusion and warmly welcome you to join and help build a workplace where everyone belongs.
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