Vacancies

Head of Service - Children's Integrated Front Door

Main Responsibility

You will:

• Provide operational oversight and professional leadership to ensure that the Front Door operates efficiently, with timely decision-making, effective triage, and appropriate safeguarding responses. Maintain a relentless focus on impact, ensuring that interventions are proportionate, evidence-informed, and child-centred.
• Act as Partnership Decision Maker, ensuring decisions comply with legislation, policies, procedures, and national standards. Ensure full compliance with Staffordshire’s child protection procedures and standards. Identify and escalate barriers to compliance or improvement to Staffordshire’s Safeguarding Children’s Partnership (SSCP), maintaining a culture of accountability and excellence in safeguarding practice.
• Ensure effective performance monitoring, risk identification, and capacity planning across the portfolio of services.
• Oversee the creation and implementation of service plans, policies, and frameworks in alignment with national legislation and local strategic priorities. Interpret and apply national policy guidance to ensure consistent, high-quality service delivery.
• Actively contribute to the work of the SSCP, serving as the strategic lead representative on key local and regional panels and working groups to strengthen inter-agency collaboration and safeguarding outcomes.

The Ideal Candidate

You'll have:

• a social work degree and be Social Work England (SWE) registered
• diverse post qualification practice experience in Children and Families together with substantial experience of effectively managing social care services for children and families 
• proven leadership along with in-depth knowledge and understanding of both social care operations and working in partnership with a variety of agencies. 
• ability to negotiate with and influence others whilst building and nurturing effective partnerships, working collaboratively with a wide range of stakeholders across the local authority and exploiting opportunities for co-production.

Interviews ( including a stakeholder panel) will be held on the from week commencing 4th August

Don’t feel you meet all the requirements? We value transferable skills, experiences, and qualifications so consider applying anyway or for an informal chat about the role please contact: Bev Davis, Interim Assistant Director for Children's Social Care at: beverley.davis@staffordshire.gov.uk 

Our Recruitment Process: We anonymise applications during shortlisting to ensure only relevant information is considered. Please complete your application fully, especially the supporting statement, to highlight what you’ll bring to the role.

About Staffordshire County Council

We are no ordinary county council:

Our Values:

The core of who we are as an organisation. Just like we all have personal values that shape our thoughts and behaviour, organisational values drive how we think and act collectively.

Our values were created and shaped by colleague feedback and national best practice and they sit at the heart of People Strategy:

We have a real sense of community spirit that brings our people together. This feeling of belonging means we are all connected to what we do and take pride in the difference we make every day for Staffordshire people. We are ambitious and our sights are set firmly on a better future.

We look forward and race ahead - that goes for your career too. 

Our benefits:

We recognise that it is our employees that are central to everything we do. We aim to create a supportive working environment where employees can achieve their full potential and achieve a healthy work-life balance. 

In addition to your salary, as a member of staff, you will have access to Our rewards and benefits - Careers at Staffordshire

Our recruitment process:

As an Authority we are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people/vulnerable adults and expect all staff and volunteers to share this commitment.

Staffordshire County Council is an equal opportunities organisation and Disability Confident employer. We encourage applications from all background and communities

As part of our commitment as a Disability Confident employer, a Gold Award Armed Forces employer and our commitment to supporting care leavers - we offer a guaranteed interview as long as your application meets the minimum criteria for the post. 

As you’ll know safeguarding and promoting the welfare of our children and young people/vulnerable adults is important to us and that’s why this position is subject to a criminal record check from the Disclosure and Barring Service. If applicable you should disclose details of unspent and unfiltered spent reprimands, formal warnings, cautions and convictions in your application form.