Team Manager

The role will manage a team of Social Workers (and other staff) within a social care service and a wider Children, Young People and Families Directorate. The key purpose of the role is to ensure high-quality social work practice which achieves the best possible outcomes (and progress) for children and young people in need of social work support, assessment, and intervention.

The post of Team Manager will ensure that standards of practice are high and that quality, including the delivery of evidenced-based systemic practice, is a consistent focus for the whole team.

Importantly, the Team Manager role will model key elements of Systemic Practice including:

• A strengths and relationship-based approach
• Different perspectives and collaboration
• Family & Goal-oriented plans which are SMART
• The value of systemic tools such as; genograms

Principal Accountabilities:

1. Strategy
   Team Managers are responsible for the performance and practice of the team. Team Managers will prioritize the quality of practice balanced alongside a focus on a set of agreed performance measures, based on statutory and inspection requirements. Team Managers will drive key service and directorate-wide priorities and ensure that the team is fully informed and engaged within its wider context – a directorate, a council, and a wider partnership.

2. Customer Focus
   The Team Manager will lead and drive key aspects of partnership working. The role will work in partnership with colleagues, parents, and carers to ensure that child-centered, purposeful systemic practice is the standard for all social work and related practice. Team Managers will routinely seek feedback from children, young people, and families through Quality Assurance work, learning from complaints and compliments received. Team Managers will set a tone which listens and values user feedback, whilst ensuring that feedback is shared and escalated when appropriate, in order to influence service design and improvement.

3. Performance Management
   Team Managers will complete routine Quality Assurance work in order to ensure that learning is embedded within team culture and practice. Quality Assurance includes; case audits, observation of practice, & Feedback from Children, Young People, and Families. Team Managers will monitor practice and individual/team performance using a Performance Dashboard and other Performance Reports. Importantly, Team Managers will prioritize performance management tasks and approach them in a way which sets a tone of continuous improvement, learning, and development.

4. Leadership
   Team Managers will be responsible for the allocation of work to team members and the transfer of work between other parts of the social care system. Team Managers will have a sound knowledge and oversight of the team caseload at any point, whilst promoting a set of system-wide priorities and standards around work flow and a transfer process. Importantly, Team Managers will achieve a balanced focus between the team caseload and a priority to ensure workflow/transition through the system in a timely way. Team Managers will make and record their decisions around case work, ensuring that all work is well planned and purposeful in order to effect positive change for children. Where possible, the goal will be to support children safely with the minimum of statutory intervention possible, promoting a principle of ‘normality’, family-based care, and early help community-based services which are local and accessible. Team Managers will prioritize decision-making which is predicated on a high degree of systemic and reflective thinking.

1. Statutory Obligations
   Team Managers will be required to understand, and present to their teams, a set of statutory requirements which apply to the whole social care system. In addition, Team Managers will have a higher level of understanding and directly manage a set of statutory requirements which specifically relate to the service area in which they work. Statutory requirements, whether timescales or an explicit process, will be a key priority and accountability of the role. Team Managers will routinely make and review decisions around complex casework, including high levels of risk. In addition, Team Managers will play a key and important role in preparing the team for inspection and supporting team members through an inspection process, ensuring that identified learning and key recommendations are taken forward.

2. Team Managers will provide regular formal and individual supervision for all team members. The two key elements of supervision will be; case supervision and individual supervision. Team Managers will prioritize the supervision of staff and follow the local supervision policy. Formal supervision and other case discussion will focus on the assessment of risk and outcomes at any given time. Team Managers will be required to provide support, challenge, and direction to staff and make decisions in relation to complex and high-risk cases. Team Managers will facilitate routine, reflective team supervision.

3. Team Managers will be responsible for a number of management tasks and accountabilities, following local policy and procedure, including;

• Complaint investigations
• Sickness monitoring
• Individual Employee Performance (IEP)
• Staff recruitment

1. Team Managers will lead and develop effective partnerships with schools, other services, and agencies in order to achieve ‘a coordinated approach to ensure effective safeguarding arrangements’ (Section 10, the Children Act 2004) and support other organisations and individuals to ensure their functions and practice has sufficient regard to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children.

2. The role will maintain a continued focus on developing people and systemic practice within the team, contributing to a wider team and single service. In addition to supervision, Team Managers will prioritize staff development and skill sharing within the team, in order to deliver the best possible practice and service for children and families. Team Managers are required to set a tone that the team as a learning system, providing support and (constructive) challenge, promoting a culture which learns, is clear about accountability but does not blame. Team Managers will work with colleagues, and their managers, to plan and deliver team and service development time, involving team members and Clinicians.

3. Team Managers are required to work closely with peers, their managers, and within a wider system. Team Managers will attend and contribute to routine decision-making panels and have oversight of all court work managed by the team.

NC4098.Team Manager.docx

Compensation Grades: GRADES 11

Pay Ranges:

£50,269