Head of Triage

The Role

Are you a strategic and collaborative leader with a deep understanding of regulatory frameworks and a commitment to protecting the public? We're looking for a Head of Triage to lead our triage function within the Fitness to Practise team, ensuring concerns about social workers are assessed promptly, proportionately, and with care.

You'll join our Regulation directorate, which plays a critical role in delivering Social Work England's statutory functions and driving improvements in professional social work practice. Working closely with the Assistant Director of Regulation, you'll lead a high-performing team responsible for the initial screening and triage of cases, ensuring our processes are legally sound, insight-driven, and aligned with our strategic goals and values.

Social Work England is the specialist regulator for social work in England, focused on enabling positive change in social work. Every day, social workers support millions of people to improve their chances in life. We believe in the power of collaboration and share a common goal with those we regulate – to protect the public, enable positive change and ultimately improve people's lives.

About The Role
As Head of Triage, you'll lead a vital function within our Regulation directorate, overseeing the initial screening and case management of concerns raised about social workers. This is a high-impact leadership role in a demanding environment where we are seeing increased numbers of referrals each year. You'll ensure our triage service operates efficiently, fairly, and in line with our legal framework—delivering outcomes that protect the public and support professional standards in social work.

You'll be responsible for driving performance, developing your team, and embedding continuous improvement across the triage function. Working closely with senior colleagues and external stakeholders, you'll help shape our regulatory approach, contribute to strategic planning, and ensure our work reflects our commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion. This is a unique opportunity to influence how concerns are managed at the earliest stage and to deliver meaningful change across the sector.

What You'll Do
In this role, you'll lead a high-performing team and oversee the delivery of a responsive, proportionate and legally sound triage service. You'll be responsible for managing resources to meet high volumes of referrals, improving the timeliness of the service, ensuring the quality and consistency of decision-making, driving continuous improvement, and contributing to the strategic direction of our regulatory work.

Key Responsibilities Include

• Lead and maintain a high-quality triage service that meets performance targets and delivers statutory outcomes.
• Oversee the triage team, ensuring effective recruitment, development and performance management.
• Ensure robust, accurate and consistent decision-making across all triage activities.
• Continuously review and improve triage operations using feedback, quality assurance and performance data.
• Collaborate across teams to identify and act on regulatory risks, service improvements and sector insights.
• Manage the triage operational budget and contribute to resource planning and forecasting.
• Prepare high-level reports, documents and committee papers, presenting to internal and external stakeholders.
• Build strong relationships with senior stakeholders to drive service improvement and uphold public protection.

About You
At Social Work England, our values are at the heart of everything we do. They shape how we work, how we make decisions, and how we support each other. We are
Fearless
,
Independent
,
Ambitious
, act with
Integrity
, and are
Collaborative and Transparent
. We're looking for colleagues who live these values in their day-to-day work.

In addition, for this position we are looking for someone who has:

• Demonstrable experience of successful leadership in a high-volume, complex triage, investigations or regulatory environment.
• A proven commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion in service delivery.
• Experience of leading and delegating across multiple teams where accuracy, timeliness and compliance are critical.
• A proven ability to design, manage and improve operational procedures within a regulatory or investigative setting.
• Excellent influencing and negotiation skills.
• Experience of setting and monitoring performance against challenging targets, and using data to drive improvement.
• Sound judgement based on standards, risk and legal frameworks, and the ability to advise others effectively.
• A track record in risk management, including identifying, escalating and mitigating operational risks.
• Experience of reporting against both operational and strategic performance measures.

About Us
Join us - Social Work England

Our behaviours and values - Social Work England

What our people say - Social Work England

Pre-Employment Checks
If you are successful at interview, we will carry out a series of routine pre-employment checks. These include verifying your references, confirming your right to work in the UK, and completing a Basic DBS (Disclosure and Barring Service) check.

These checks are conducted in partnership with our third-party provider, Amiqus, who will guide you through the process.

Please note that all offers of employment are subject to the satisfactory completion of these checks. If you have any questions or concerns please contact our recruitment team via and our team will be happy to help.

Contact

If you have any queries about the recruitment process, or would like to discuss the role, please contact

How to apply

To apply, complete the application form by the closing date.

Interview

At interview we will seek to further understand your skills, knowledge, experience and motivation and test the key competencies of the role. If you are successful, we will undertake routine pre-employment checks.

Find out more about our application and interview process.

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