Frontline Social Care
Deputy Manager
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Deputy Manager — Children's Residential Home working with Frontline Social Care | Part of Aetheria Group
📍 Gloucester (two new homes, ten minutes apart) Permanent, full-time | Days with senior on-call responsibility 💷 £37,500 – £40,000 per annum
Lead a home worth being proud of. From day one.
You already know what good residential care looks like. You know what it takes to hold a team together on a hard day, to sit with a child who is struggling and not flinch, and to run a shift that stays calm, purposeful and safe even when it doesn't feel that way. So now lead it.
We're opening two new Ofsted registered children's homes in Gloucester, ten minutes apart, and we're looking for a Deputy Manager to help shape one of them from the ground up. Culture, practice, standards, team, built with you, not handed to you.
This is the rare opportunity to build, not inherit.
🌟 Why Frontline Social Care
Clinical infrastructure built in, not bolted on. Our therapeutic model, grounded in Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy, PACE and Secure Base principles, is supported by a Consultant Clinical Psychologist and Therapeutic Practitioner embedded in the service. Reflective practice supervision is a structural commitment, not an aspiration.
A new registration means you help set the standards. No entrenched habits to undo, no culture inherited from a previous regime. You'll help establish how this home operates, its rhythms, its expectations, its relationships with children, families and placing authorities.
Deliberate consistency. Small, stable teams built for relational continuity. Children in our homes have adults who know them, stay with them, and mean it.
A genuine career pathway. Clear progression toward Registered Manager and beyond, across Frontline Social Care and the wider Aetheria Group. Working toward your Level 5 Diploma in Leadership and Management? We'll support you to complete it.
Trusted leadership. Delegated authority is real here. You'll have the autonomy to lead, not simply relay decisions made elsewhere.
🧭 The Role
Working in close partnership with the Registered Manager, you will:
✅ Support safeguarding oversight, quality assurance, workforce supervision and care planning governance, acting as senior on-site decision-maker in the Registered Manager's absence. ✅ Mentor, develop and performance-manage the staff team, building capability, confidence and a culture of reflective, child-centred practice. ✅ Maintain inspection-ready standards across the home, covering recording quality, care plan currency, risk management, and the evidence base for each child's progress. ✅ Hold the Designated Safeguarding Lead function when required, ensuring referrals, notifications and multi-agency communications meet statutory requirements under Working Together to Safeguard Children (2026) and the Children's Homes (England) Regulations 2015. ✅ Share the senior on-call rota, providing 24/7 safeguarding escalation and management support ✅ Contribute to the home's engagement with placing authorities, social workers, Independent Reviewing Officers and each child's wider professional network.
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Above all, you'll set and sustain the emotional tone of the home: calm, consistent, boundaried, and relentlessly focused on what each child needs to feel safe, valued and able to move toward something better.
💡 What You'll Bring
- A warm, grounded steadiness under pressure, and leadership that brings a team with you
- A deep, practical grasp of safeguarding and trauma-informed practice, including developmental trauma, attachment disruption, and the impact of adverse childhood experiences
- Confidence in an Ofsted-regulated environment and an understanding of what inspection-ready practice looks like day to day, not just when notice is given
- The belief, held without sentimentality, that every child in residential care can move toward a more stable and hopeful future
📋 Essential Requirements
- Level 3 Diploma in Residential Childcare, Level 3 Health and Social Care (Children and Young People pathway), or a degree-level qualification in Social Work, Childhood Studies, Youth and Community Work, Psychology, Criminology, Education, Nursing or a closely related discipline. Candidates with substantial, clearly transferable experience from children's residential care, fostering, education, youth justice, family support, NHS, mental health or other regulated care settings will also be considered.
- Level 5 Diploma in Leadership and Management for Residential Childcare, held, in progress, or committed willingness to work towards (desirable)
- Demonstrable experience of leading shifts, supervising staff and carrying safeguarding and care planning responsibilities in an Ofsted-registered children's home or directly comparable regulated setting.
- Aged 21 or over (a Genuine Occupational Requirement under Schedule 9 of the Equality Act 2010)
- Right to work in the UK (we are unable to offer visa sponsorship for this role)
- Full UK driving licence.
- Flexibility across working patterns including evenings, weekends and sleep-in duties as required by the rota.
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📍 Work location: In person
🎁 Benefits
Casual dress · Company events · Company pension · Employee mentoring programme · Free on-site parking
🛡️ Our Commitment to Safeguarding
Frontline Social Care is unconditionally committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people. This role constitutes regulated activity with children. Every appointment is subject to an enhanced DBS disclosure with Children's Barred List check, full identity and qualification verification, a minimum of two satisfactory professional references (including most recent employer) verified before appointment, and a values-based interview with safeguarding scenario assessment.
Our safer recruitment process is fully aligned with Working Together to Safeguard Children (2026), Keeping Children Safe in Education (2024), and the Children's Homes (England) Regulations 2015, Schedule 2.
We are an Equal Opportunities Employer, committed to anti-discriminatory and anti-racist practice, and we actively welcome applications from all communities, backgrounds and identities. If you need any adjustment to the recruitment process, tell us and we will make it without question.
👉 Apply Now
We are shortlisting on a rolling basis and will move quickly for the right candidate.
Apply via: https://form.jotform.com/260962943501054
Tell us about your leadership experience and what draws you to this role. If you'd prefer an informal conversation before applying, we'd be glad to hear from you.
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