Overview
Team Manager – Family Safeguarding Court Lead – Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom
Our Benefits
We value our colleagues in Cambridgeshire County Council and have developed a number of benefits in addition to the basics like annual leave, sick pay, pension and mileage…
- A comprehensive wellbeing package to cover all aspects of wellbeing, both in and out of work, which can also be accessed by your family
- Buy up to 4 weeks additional annual leave (pro-rata) through our salary sacrifice scheme
- Take your bank holidays flexibly to better suit your personal circumstances
- Make Additional Voluntary Contributions (Shared AVCs) to your pension with tax and National Insurance savings
- Access to development opportunities, apprenticeships and qualified coaches to support your personal and professional growth
- Paid volunteering hours each year so you can make a positive impact on our community during your normal working day
- Access to Peer Support Groups through our IDEAL staff equality, diversity and inclusion network
- Opportunities to nominate and receive Employee Recognition Awards
- An Our Cambs Rewards account, giving you access to in-store and online discounts as well as our Car Lease and Cycle to Work schemes
About the role
Are you an experienced Team Manager or Senior Social Worker looking for an opportunity to shape and improve court practice across Children’s Services? Do you have experience in quality assurance and a track record of fostering a learning environment that supports social workers to enhance their practice?
If so, then this could be your next challenge. We are seeking an exceptional practitioner to take on a new and influential Court Lead role, driving quality, performance, and best practice across pre-proceedings and care proceedings.
We have an opportunity for you to take the lead in the development and implementation of an overarching quality assurance framework to embed consistent, high-quality practice across all court-related work for Cambridgeshire County Council’s Children’s Service.
This is a new permanent Team Manager position within our Family Support and Safeguarding Service. For an initial period of approximately 12 months, the successful candidate will undertake the Court Lead function across the service, responsible for overseeing the progression of court work, ensuring that care proceedings and pre-proceedings progress efficiently, within statutory timescales, and to a consistently high standard of practice. Once this programme of work is complete, the role is expected to transition into a Family Help Team Manager position, subject to the future needs of the service and the implementation of the Families First model.
You will play a pivotal role in driving performance, reducing delay, and strengthening the quality of court work, ensuring that care planning is robust, child-focused, and legally sound.
As Court Lead you will act as the key link between Children’s Services, the judiciary and courts, Legal Services, Cafcass, social work teams and managers. You will oversee and track all court- related activity, monitoring legal trackers to ensure compliance with timescales and practice standards and promote best practice and consistency across all court work, ensuring the child’s voice, wishes, and feelings remain central to all planning and decision-making.
We will be looking for you to embed a culture of continuous improvement and reflective practice, ensuring continuous performance management and driving high-quality practice across both Public and Private Law proceedings. You will model excellent practice and provide constructive challenge where standards are not being met, supporting colleagues to achieve consistently high-quality outcomes. Working collaboratively with Team Managers, Service Managers, and the Head of Service to ensure the appropriate support, challenge, and development are in place to improve practice and outcomes for children and families.
This is a unique opportunity to shape the future of court practice within Cambridgeshire’s Children’s Services. You will have the autonomy to influence service-wide improvement, work alongside experienced leaders and legal professionals, and play a key role in ensuring the best possible outcomes for children and families; don’t delay, apply today!
If this sounds like an environment where you would thrive, we would love to hear from you! For more information, email Sam Howlett, Head of Service, on samantha.howlett@cambridgeshire.gov.uk to arrange a suitable time for a call.
Interviews will be held in person and are expected to take place during the week commencing 5th October.
Appointment to this post will be subject to the outcome of an Enhanced Disclosure obtained through the Disclosure and Barring Service. The Council is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and vulnerable adults and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment.
About you
To be successful in this role, you will need a deep understanding of childcare legislation, the Family Court system, statutory frameworks, and the Public Law Outline (PLO) with substantial exposure to complex child protection, safeguarding, and care proceedings.
You will be able to evidence working effectively with various stakeholders, including the judiciary and external agencies, demonstrating the ability to build strong professional relationships and confidently challenging where needed.
You will be an excellent communicator with strong interpersonal and communication skills, both written and verbal.
You will display strong analytical, organisational, and performance management skills and be able to demonstrate experience creating a learning environment that has enabled social workers to improve practice through coaching, mentoring, training or line management.
You must:
- Be a qualified Social Worker registered with Social Work England.
- Have the ability to work from a variety of locations and travel countywide independently
For a full list of the requirements of the role, please check out the Job Description & Person Specification.
About us
Cambridgeshire is a great place to work and live with a diverse population, an urban centre in Cambridge, historic Isle of Ely, Huntingdon and St Ives as well as more rural landscapes.
We are proud to serve the diverse communities of Cambridgeshire and want our workforce to be reflective of this diversity, which we believe benefits our employees, the organisation and our communities.
Visit our jobs and careers section to find out more about our wide range of learning and development opportunities; apprenticeships; our wellbeing package; staff benefits; our commitment to equality, diversity and Inclusion.
http://www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk/council/jobs-and-careers
IMPORTANT: Before applying for this role, please make sure you have the right to work in the country where the role is based. Unless it clearly stipulates within in the job advert above that the hiring company is looking to or able to sponsor applicants it is deemed that the hiring employer will only consider applications from those able to comply with and work in the country where the role is based.
