Childrens Centre Operational Lead

Childrens Services (excl Schools) - Children's Social Care & Safeguarding

About Us

Bexley is an outer London Borough with the best of both worlds, located between the hustle and bustle of London and the Garden of England, Kent. Within the borough we have award-winning parks, open spaces and listed heritage sites. We work flexibly from home and also from a modern office environment in the heart of Bexleyheath.

The Council, its staff and partners, were delighted in March 2023, when Ofsted judged the overall effectiveness of children's social care services to be 'outstanding' for the second time. We were especially pleased that our investment in frontline practitioners and managers was recognised. We have been working hard to create an environment where social workers can do the work they came into the profession to do - to support and help families to stay together where this is in children's best interests and it is safe enough for this to happen.

About the Role

We are recruiting for a Children's Centre Operational Lead. Our Children's Centres aim to improve outcomes for young children, ensuring they are happy, healthy and ready to begin school.

The Centres also provide help and support to families around parenting, health and well-being and employability. The services they provide are designed for parents and carers who may be expecting a new baby or have a child under the age of five.

Centres offer a range of services, including:

1. pre-school education and access to early education and childcare (on some sites)
2. access to health services, including health visiting and midwifery care
3. adult learning opportunities to help parents/carers progress into training or employment
4. access to play opportunities that are available to everyone, such as Stay and Play
5. access to services delivered by private providers that are available to everyone with small fees attached

We have a dedicated Children's Centre Team who are available to support you in accessing services and information. They will also deliver sessions across the borough together with some of our partners.

We are looking for a Children's Centre Operational Lead to continue to build on our excellent foundation but to help us to innovate even further with our early help work to ensure effective delivery of Children's Centre services across the borough from a variety of venues. We need you to be an exciting practitioner believing firmly in the rights of families to bring up their children safely and where they need support, to be able to help to develop respectful and authentic offers of help. You will need to have leadership experience. In addition, you will be creative and collaborative as a leader working closely with colleagues in our Multi - Agency Safeguarding hub and our child protection teams.

Ofsted judged that we provide strong management oversight of practice, that we have a well - embedded practice framework to enable meaningful family focused help, that we offer clear progress in career pathways, a talent management scheme and a nurturing environment to enable social work to flourish. We believe deeply in relationship based practice and 'Signs of Safety' is the vehicle enabling us to do this respectfully and in collaboration with the people we are trying to help.

If this sounds exciting and reassuring, we want you to get in touch with us. Our workforce is stable with over 90% permanent staff, but we are always looking for practitioners wanting to come and practice confidently as part of our team making a difference for families and children.

Candidate Profile

• Promotes the use of Signs of Safety practice principles

Please refer to the Job Description for further details regarding the job role.

How To Apply

Use the 'Apply for vacancy' button. Please note that the system has a one-hour time limit. We would advise you to prepare your answers separately and then copy and paste into the online form once finalised and have your CV and/or Supporting statement ready to upload.

If any mandatory fields are missing, a pop-up box will appear at the top of the page advising which sections require completion. Please check your Junk email for any correspondence.

As a disability confident employer Bexley welcomes applications from people with all disabilities, including hidden disabilities and mental health conditions. We will interview any disabled applicant who meets the minimum criteria. If you require reasonable adjustments to be made to any part of the recruitment process due to your disability, please contact us on .

This role may be available as a development opportunity through secondment for the Council's existing employees. The Council's Secondment Scheme can be found here. If this option is of interest, please contact the recruiting manager.

Contract Duration

6 months

Grade

BEXLEY12

Contract Type

Fixed Term

Contract Hours

36.00

Vacancy Location Location

South East, London, Bexley Civic Offices

Attachments Job Description

Children's Centre Operational Lead JD (1).pdf (178 Kb)