Assistant Director

**Purpose of the role**

We have been established as a successful and values driven organisation. The assistant director role is a central part of the leadership that aims to build on the platform that has now been established, to have a significant impact on the quality of social work practice in England.

The assistant director will work autonomously and alongside the executive lead team to continue to shape our leadership structure, to optimise service performance and reinforce our core values and behaviours throughout the organisation. You will play a key, visible, leadership role in delivering our statutory responsibilities, and contribute to the development and delivery of our corporate and organisational priorities.

Our assistant directors will be accountable for delivery in their own areas of the business. They will also work together in collaboration with the executive directors, ensuring the effective delivery of our statutory and strategic objectives, deputising for the executive lead team and other assistant directors as appropriate.

Together with the other assistant directors you will build a suitable structure for the organisation, executing key decisions in relation to operations and finance as well as supporting and informing strategic direction. You will also give strategic direction to our heads of and be the escalation point for risk, feeding up to the executive directors, weighing and identifying corporate risk and appropriate mitigations.

You will contribute to our focus on delivering our ambitions as a regulator, and in delivering for people, and on our commitments to equality, diversity and inclusion. The team respect differences and make decisions that benefit the organisation.

**What you will do**

**Corporate leadership**
- Deliver visible leadership of a multi-disciplinary team, developing and implementing our externally facing work aims and objectives,. Supporting, managing and providing strategic direction to heads of functions to enable them to deliver the operational objectives within their area of responsibility.
- Act decisively and make robust, unbiased decisions at a strategic level and act as decision maker for agreed areas of our statutory framework. Support heads of function in their operational decision making in their respective areas.
- Be accountable to the executive director in relation to team, directorate and corporate risk, ensuring they are appropriately addressed and are appropriately profiled and reviewed. Understand regulatory risk and the strategies that can be developed to reduce risk and prevent harm. Work alongside the executive director in ensuring that our external engagement and communication activities are undertaken with this in mind.
- Identify and implement organisational changes where necessary that enhance flexibility, responsiveness and quality of service.
- Establish, build and maintain relationships with our Board and the sponsor departments, the Department for Education and the Department of Health and Social Care, as well as other key stakeholders. Attending meetings and networks as the representative for the team, directorate and wider organisation, deputising for executive directors and other assistant directors where appropriate.
- Role model our values and behaviours, inspiring and motivating leaders and our people to achieve our strategic objectives and to achieve our ambitions as a regulator.
- Deputise for executive directors and other assistant directors as necessary.
- Demonstrate clear commitment to coproduction with our National Advisory Forum, sector representatives and those with lived experience in all aspects of your work.

**Directorate specific**
- Accountable for strategic engagement and communication across the organisation providing leadership on our strategic position across regulation and social work.
- Accountable for strategic developments in relation to our performance and our impact as a regulator including externally, and alignment with other key national developments impacting on the social work profession.
- Play a leadership role from a policy perspective to improve and drive forward our approach to data collection, insight and analysis and how this is used to improve our performance as a regulator, and our understanding of the social work profession, working collaboratively with teams in othern parts of the organisation including our data and insight team.
- In collaboration with key internal and external stakeholders, lead the development of guidance and regulatory frameworks in relation to data collection and insight.
- Lead on the delivery of high quality authoritative publications on our findings an strategic intent on all matters relating to our regulation and social work.
- Lead on all aspects of our communication - internally and externally, using innovative and sector leading approaches to deliver clear (and sometimes complex) messages effectively and to enhance our leadership role in the sector.
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