Child Maintenance Service Director

**Details**:
**Reference number**:

- 258086**Salary**:

- £95,000 - £115,000-
**Job grade**:

- SCS Pay Band 2**Contract type**:

- Permanent
- Loan
- Secondment**Length of employment**:

- 3 years**Business area**:

- DWP - Service Excellence - Child Maintenance Group**Type of role**:

- Administration / Corporate Support**Working pattern**:

- Flexible working, Full-time**Number of jobs available**:

- 1Contents

Location

About the job

**Benefits**:
Things you need to know

Location
- Birkenhead, Dudley, Falkirk, Hastings, Leicester, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, PlymouthAbout the job

**Job summary**:
**This is a fantastic opportunity to help make a difference to the lives of children and families across the United Kingdom**.

DWP does work that matters. It touches the lives of citizens across the breadth of the UK, serving over 22 million customers a year. We keep children out of poverty; we help people without jobs to find work so that they can support themselves and their families; we ensure the most vulnerable in society are protected.

The Child Maintenance Service helps separated parents make financial choices to provide for their children, offering a statutory assessment, collection and enforcement service to those who need it. Our mission is to **‘**get money to children’_ _because it makes a real difference to children’s lives and this year we collected and arranged a record £1 billion for children, delivering child maintenance services to over 2 million parents across the UK. We have over 4000 staff across the UK.

We are now looking for a new Director for the Child Maintenance Service. This is a significant leadership role. If appointed, you will have: direct responsibility for the day to day running of this major service delivery group; for the successful implementation of organisation transformation, including digital developments; and the increasingly important challenge of tackling increasing levels of unpaid maintenance at a time when customer vulnerability is increasing.

**Job description**:
The Director has responsibility for the day-to-day running of the organisation leading the delivery of Child Maintenance Services to more than 2 million parents across the UK, leading an operation of over 4,100 people nationally.

This role sits in Service Excellence Group which leads the delivery of services across the lifecycles of households, from families with children to pensioners, and provides cross-cutting services to all of DWP including Fraud Error and Debt, and Disputes and Appeals.

As a key member of the Service Excellence Executive Team, you will help drive a culture in which colleagues feel they have the space to get the right outcomes for every customer in every interaction, a culture in which we continually drive improvements to service by joining up across the department

**Person specification**:

- Driving high levels of performance, efficiency and customer experience, learning from customer feedback and available insight to lead improvements; delivering a quality, cost effective service focusing on getting cases right first time and collecting money for children.
- Delivery and implementation of our Child Maintenance Modernisation programme, supporting Child Maintenance Policy Reform, leading on the development of the strategic approach for the future including a new organisational design and operating model.
- Reducing levels of unpaid maintenance, driving Child Maintenance's Collection, Enforcement and Fraud strategies to maximise use of current enforcement powers; working closely with policy and external stakeholders, collaborating across sectors to benchmark with best in class debt collection, learning from others to inform, develop and deliver new powers.
- Collaborating with stakeholders, government officials and ministers to drive service improvements and manage public and political scrutiny.
- Building capability in line with Professional Standards, role modelling your own continuous professional development and through your behaviour enable the Child Maintenance Service to continue to be an inclusive place, where people can be their best.

Essential Criteria:

- An exceptional and inspirational leader, with the capacity to enable cultural change and the ability to connect with people at all levels, across a large, nationally dispersed team.
- A passion for customer service with demonstrable experience of large scale service delivery and exposure to debt recovery in a high volume customer environment.
- A clear record of success in implementing business transformation and change within budget and timescales across multiple teams and business processes.
- The personal gravitas to influence and challenge at the most senior levels of government, and the ability to manage complex senior stakeholder relationships under public and political scrutiny.
- Astute business acumen; able to deliver at pace, manage risk and reach sound judgements and decisions based on level of ris