Agency Advisor

Job Description
Agency Advisor & Permanence Lead
PO7: £61,686 rising in annual increments to £64,938 pa incl. LW
Permanent / Full Time
Hybrid Working, 3 days a week in office
About Lambeth Children Services
Lambeth is a borough of huge diversity, strength, and possibility. Lambeth is home to approximately 63,000 children aged 0-18, representing nearly 20% of our borough's population. Our Lambeth partnerships have the highest ambitions for our children and want them to grow up to be happy, safe and thriving in supportive communities. We have a rich network of good and outstanding schools, a passionate voluntary community sector and an exciting youth and play offer. Children growing up in Lambeth are surrounded by beautiful green spaces and a borough with a rich history, arts, and music scene.

Despite this, our children also face challenges and adversity. There are several health and wellbeing indicators that are higher in Lambeth than other boroughs, including children in need due to parent disability, first time entrants to youth justice system, and children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities. We have significant demand for mental health and emotional wellbeing provision and have critical challenges regarding placement sufficiency for our Children Looked After. Lambeth is the fifth most densely populated borough in the UK with sharp contrasts between wealth and poverty. It is estimated that 27% of our children and young people are living in poverty, rising to 43% when housing costs are factored in; we know Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated challenges for many families in Lambeth and created a new set of problems for others.

It's an incredibly exciting time to come and work in Lambeth. There's plenty to get your teeth into – be it leading the implementation of our strategy for youth services, overseeing the transformation of our emotional health and wellbeing provision, or presiding over the development of a new team delivering efficient brokerage for our teams.

We're passionate about integration of services and teams across education, health and social care to ensure our population can access services that are joined-up and seamless. All of these roles play very important roles in partnership development with internal and external stakeholders.

About You
You must have the skills and qualities of a service leader, a problem solver and ability to maintain calmness when having difficult conversations about effective permanence for Lambeth Children. You must have what it takes to bring positive energy, enthusiasm, and passion to the role. You must have the tenacity to lead, shape and develop a team, bringing creativity and innovation to the way we work.

You will be holding the central operational and advisory role for securing effective permanency for children across Lambeth Children's Social Care and act as the designated operational interface with Adopt London South Regional Adoption Agency (RAA).

You will act as the statutory Agency Advisor providing quality assurance and advice to the Agency Decision Manker. You will ensure permanence for children is at the heart of whatever we do and the decision we make demonstrates sound and outstanding practice. Furthermore, you will ensure that Lambeth Adoption and Fostering services are of outstanding quality and in compliance with the Adoption and Fostering Regulations, National Minimum Standards and Statutory Guidance.

You would be required to collaborate with the RAA, partner Boroughs and Lambeth Children's Social Care workforce in the development and implementation of shared practice, procedures and pathways to ensure effective working relationships.

You would be the designated lead for supporting and developing outstanding Permanency practice across Lambeth children's services ensuring there is effective practice relationships, frameworks, guidance and permanence pathways. Providing leadership and advice to frontline social work staff, managers, Panel Chairs and Panel Members in delivering and implementing any future changes in permanency and panel policies, procedure or other developments.

A message from The Assistant Director
This is an exciting role because it is at the heart of our improvement programme. The successful applicant must be a competent, confident and a curious practitioner with exceptional ability to promote and facilitate innovation, creativity, and continuous improvement. The successful candidate would be supporting Lambeth Social Care's senior managers by advising on permanency strategy, policy and future direction of the service, ensuring effective feedback from quality assurance and views of Panel users and translation into service delivery. Your will be keeping senior management informed of any issues or shortfalls in service quality and performance providing suitable action plans to address these matters.

If you have any queries in relation to this job vacancy, please contact the Assistant Director: Andrews Osei,

Why Lambeth:

• Fantastic, modern working environment in the award-winning Lambeth Town Hall and Civic Centre buildings
• Competitive Salaries
• Up to 35 days annual leave, dependent upon continuous service
• 5 Minutes from London Underground and excellent transport links into the centre of London
• Cycle to Work Scheme (including City Bike Hire scheme)
• Attractive Local Government Pension Scheme

We are a Stonewall diversity champion, a Living Wage Employer and we guarantee to interview all disabled candidates who meet the minimum criteria of the role.

Successful candidates will be asked to apply for an Enhanced Certificate from the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS). Further information about the DBS can be found at 

In addition, you will also be required to undertake a Cifas check from the Fraud Prevention organisation. Further information can be found here Cifas .

Please note we operate an anonymised application process. If you are uploading your CV or a personal statement, please remove your personal details and replace these with your unique candidate application number.

Interested?
Click the 'Apply' button and complete an online application form explicitly evidencing in the Supporting Statement your experience and understanding of contextual safeguarding and community working, and how you also meet the criteria marked with an 'A' at shortlist stage, along with uploading your CV.

JD and Person Specification

Closing Date
: 2nd of November at midnight

Lambeth aims for quality services and equal opportunities for all and is committed to safer recruitment