What You'll Lead

You will:

• Lead the day-to-day management and development of the children's home.
• Create a stable, nurturing and ambitious culture for children and staff.
• Provide strong safeguarding leadership and promote professional curiosity.
• Ensure the home operates in accordance with the Children's Homes (England) Regulations 2015, the Quality Standards and relevant Ofsted requirements.
• Recruit, lead, supervise, coach and develop a capable residential care team.
• Establish clear expectations and consistently high standards of practice.
• Ensure children's needs, risks, plans, wishes and desired outcomes are understood and effectively supported.
• Maintain strong standards of care planning, risk management, recording, monitoring and quality assurance.
• Promote children's wishes and feelings and ensure meaningful participation in decisions affecting their lives and their home.
• Build effective relationships with families, social workers, placing authorities, education, health professionals and other agencies.
• Contribute to careful placement matching and ensure admissions are consistent with the home's ability to meet children's needs safely.
• Manage staffing, resources and the operational budget responsibly.
• Lead effective supervision, appraisal, performance management and staff development.
• Identify weaknesses early and take effective action to improve practice.
• Promote reflective practice, learning and continuous improvement.
• Maintain strong regulatory and inspection readiness.
• Work collaboratively with the Responsible Individual and provider while exercising the professional judgement expected of a Registered Manager.

Who We're Looking For

Qualifications matter, but we are not recruiting based on a certificate alone.

We are looking for someone who can lead people, protect children, make sound decisions and build a home where children and staff can thrive.

You should be able to demonstrate:

• Strong experience within children's residential care.
• Leadership or management experience within a care environment.
• Excellent safeguarding knowledge and sound professional judgement.
• Strong understanding of children's residential care regulation and the Quality Standards.
• Confidence in challenging poor practice and maintaining high expectations.
• The ability to remain calm, reflective and decisive when dealing with complex situations.
• Strong people-management, supervision and staff-development skills.
• Ability to build and maintain a positive, accountable team culture.
• Strong written and verbal communication.
• Professional credibility when working with social workers, placing authorities and other external professionals.
• Good understanding of care planning, risk assessment and placement matching.
• Commitment to children's rights, wishes and feelings.
• Integrity, accountability and high professional standards.

Regulatory experience requirements

Candidates must be able to satisfy the relevant requirements for registration as the manager of a children's home, including appropriate experience and suitability for the role.

This will normally include:

• At least 2 years' experience within the last 5 years in a position relevant to the residential care of children; and
• At least 1 year in a role involving the supervision and management of staff working in a care role.

Qualifications

A Level 5 Diploma in Leadership and Management for Residential Childcare (England) or recognised equivalent is highly desirable.

Applications may also be considered from exceptional candidates who otherwise satisfy the relevant experience requirements and are appropriately positioned to achieve the required qualification within the regulatory timeframe.

We'd Particularly Like to Hear From You If You Have

• Previous experience as a Registered Manager of a children's home.
• Strong Deputy Manager experience and readiness to progress into registration.
• Experience of Ofsted inspections.
• Evidence of achieving, maintaining or contributing to positive inspection outcomes.
• Experience preparing a home for inspection.
• Experience establishing, opening or developing a children's home.
• Experience supporting an Ofsted registration process.
• Experience recruiting and developing residential childcare teams.
• Experience establishing effective systems, policies and operational standards.
• Strong safer-recruitment and workforce-development experience.
• Experience working effectively with placing authorities and external professionals.
• Strong placement-matching and referral decision-making experience.
• Evidence of improving the quality, culture or outcomes of a residential service.

Why Join Alderwing?

For the right manager, the attraction of Alderwing is simple:

• You will have the opportunity to help build the home properly from the beginning.
• You will have direct access to the people making decisions rather than working through multiple layers of management.
• Your experience and professional judgement will be heard.
• You will have meaningful input into the development of the team and culture you will ultimately be responsible for leading.
• And as Alderwing develops, we want strong leaders to have opportunities to develop with us.

We are looking for somebody who wants more than their next management job.

We want someone who can look back and say:

“I helped build this home properly.”

Interested?

If our approach reflects the kind of children's home you would be proud to lead, we would be pleased to hear from you.

Apply directly through LinkedIn or contact us confidentially at: enquiries@alderwingcare.co.uk

Appointment will be subject to Alderwing Care's safer recruitment process, satisfactory references and appropriate safeguarding and background checks.