Director Children’s Services – Tameside

Director Children’s Services

Salary: £125k to £145k – dependent on candidate experience

About the Role

Tameside is one of the 10 local authorities that make up Greater Manchester, nestling between the buzz of Manchester City Centre and the beauty of the Peak District on our doorstep.  We have clear and stable leadership, and in the last few years have created an integrated management structure with our local CCG.  However, with a manufacturing and industrial heritage, we face many endemic issues associated with poverty, a low-skills, low pay economy and inter-generational health challenges. Our vision for a new Tameside is captured in our shared plan – Our People, Our Place, Our Plan.  This ground-breaking approach works for us and more importantly, is delivering the benefits of an integrated system for our people.

Our holistic approach to generational change at Tameside places a great focus on investing in all our children, through our schools, our early intervention work, our children’s social care, and by creating opportunities within the borough to thrive, be healthy and succeed.  That’s why we are investing in our Children’s Services, with the resources, support and strategies to drive up the quality of outcomes for all our children and young people, including those that need specific support at different stages of their lives.

We’re looking for a new DCS to continue our journey, to bring drive, increased momentum and passion.  We have clearly agreed plans and strategies that we’re convinced will deliver, backed by a strong team, corporate and political commitment. This is not about a radical re-set – it’s about calm, reassured, confident leadership that keeps building, whilst picking up the pace of improvement and remains steadfast when needed.

Ongoing priorities for Children’s Social Care include:

• managing our high numbers of children in care and the associated costs,
• increasing the impact of our early intervention work,
• embedding a culture that views all we do through the eyes of a child and moves from reactive services to pro-active interventions,
• co-designing holistic, locality based services to harness community assets,
• stabilising the workforce,
• getting our key partners more engaged with key services,
• being a voice across Greater Manchester and
• developing our relationships with regulators.

We work well with schools and share our senior education leadership with Stockport Council. Our priorities here remain:

• supporting our MATs, especially the smaller ones, to perform and break the cycle of low attainment whilst
• helping young people transition into higher level jobs, education and training.

Our new DCS will have deep experience of overseeing improvement within Children’s Social Care, either as a qualified social worker or as a senior leader with significant experience of successful relevant service oversight. You’ll need to show you can drive ongoing service improvement with challenging oversight, under pressure and putting children first.  We want calm leadership, constancy of purpose, resilience, robustness, drive and excellent people and partnership skills. You’ll have exercised judgement at the highest levels, whether as a senior AD or a current DCS. We’ll focus more on your skills, experience and capacity to lead a clear, but demanding agenda within a highly political environment.  We know this is a tough role at an exceptional time.  At Tameside you’ll find the support and team to help you flourish.

Facts and Figures

Number of staff: 500 staff in Children’s Services, 170 in Education teams.

Number of schools: 76 – Primary, 16 – Secondary, 5 special schools. 2 – 16-18 years.

YP (0-19) population: 54,921

Numbers of children in care: 695 Cared for Children, 409 children subject to a Child Protection plan and in total 1320 Children in Need.

Tameside 23^rd most deprived LA area in 317 English councils.

Budget: