Project Manager – Best Care Transformation

Sandwell Childrens Trust,

At Sandwell Children’s Trust we strive for excellence to improve the lives of children. Our ‘Sandwell Deal’, brings together our new improved offering that make Sandwell Children’s Trust a great place to work; it also sets out our expectations of you as a member of staff.

What we can offer you:-

• Generous annual leave of up to 31 days, plus 5 additional days for long service recognition.
• Your birthday off paid in addition to annual leave entitlement and 8 Bank Holidays, plus a concessionary day at Christmas.
• A generous local government career average pension scheme with employer contributions of 21.6%.
• Recognition of individual loyalty with service awards from 2, 5, 10 and every 5 years onwards.
• Flexible working patterns that suit you and all of our roles have well-defined career progression.
• Competitive expenses for both mileage (55p per mile) and subsistence, plus access to a comprehensive employee benefits scheme.

With the work that we have done so far and with the ambitions we have for the future, it’s a really exciting time to join Sandwell Children’s Trust and to become part of our ‘Sandwell Family’.

Please visit The Sandwell Deal via this hyperlink

https://sandwelldeal.co.uk/

Role Details

37 hours per week

Fixed term contract until 31st March 2028

Sandwell Children’s Trust are seeking to recruit an experienced and dynamic Interim Project Manager, reporting to the Programme Manager to support and manage the planning, design and implementation phases of what will be Sandwell’s Best Care Transformation Programme and associated projects to enable the system change to be delivered.

The Best Care Transformation Programme is a strategic change programme designed to improve outcomes for children in care and care experienced young people through strengthened permanence planning, kinship care, placement sufficiency, residential transformation, reunification where appropriate, and preparation for adulthood.

Key Responsibilities:

• Support the Programme Manager in:
  • Supporting the development and delivery of the Best Care Transformation Programme, ensuring successful implementation of key workstreams relating to:
    • Permanence and reunification
    • Kinship and family network care
    • Placement sufficiency and fostering
    • Residential care transformation
    • Preparation for adulthood and care leaver services
    • Service redesign and sustainability initiatives
  • Ensuring delivery of improved outcomes, system efficiencies and alignment with national reform agendas and the Trust's strategic priorities.
  • Ensuring the development and enhancement of existing social care services and family support provision in Sandwell within the requirements of the government vision of ‘Keeping Children Safe, Helping Families Thrive’. By providing expertise, resilience and capacity and ensuring that risks and issues are identified, in a high-impact transformation programme (Priority 2 “Practice” and Priority 3 “Partnership / Families First”) ensuring alignment with the Trust’s vision and strategic objective.
  • Managing and supporting delivery across the Best Care Transformation Programme, ensuring that individual projects and workstreams are aligned, dependencies are managed, risks and issues are actively monitored, and programme benefits are realised. This includes supporting governance arrangements, programme boards, performance reporting and stakeholder engagement across internal and external partners.
• Develop and maintain programme plans, milestone tracking, risk registers and benefits realisation frameworks.
• Establish effective governance arrangements and prepare reports, briefings and presentations for senior leadership teams, programme boards and other governance forums.
• Coordinate multi-agency stakeholders across children's social care, education, health, commissioning, housing and wider partners.
• Support implementation of the Trust's Permanence Strategy, Kinship Care Strategy, Residential Care Project and Preparing for Adulthood transformation priorities.
• Monitor programme performance against agreed KPIs, analysing trends and identifying corrective action where required.
• Facilitate workshops, service redesign activity and continuous improvement initiatives that support cultural and practice change.
• Ensure robust programme documentation, action tracking and audit trails are maintained throughout implementation.
• Drive cost-effective solutions, identifying and delivering significant savings whilst making sure of high service standards. To work within the budget restraints as set out in the Trusts MTFP. To work closely with the Programme Manager and other Stakeholders in establishing, agreeing, and monitoring targets for service delivery and management performance for the service.