Assistant Director

Social Work First are recruiting for:Cambridgeshire County CouncilInterim Assistant DirectorEarly Help & Children's Social Care£525 a dayThis is a critical senior management role in children's services in Peterborough and Cambridgeshire, and a key memberof the joint children's services leadership team.The two authorities are working increasingly closely together and this post would be jointly appointed by the two authorities, although one authority would be the lead employer.There are three assistant directorroles in Children's Services. Alongside this role, there is an Assistant Director for Fostering, Adoption and Specialist Youth Services and an Assistant Director for Safeguarding and Quality Assurance.These assistant director roles all have responsibilitiesacross children's services in both local authorities, and all report to the Director of Children's Services.The lead areas of responsibility for the Assistant Director for Early Help and Children's Social Care include: The Integrated Front Door, includingthe MASH, Early Help Hub, and the Missing, Exploited and Trafficked hub. This is joint service that operates across the two authorities; Early Help Services across Cambridgeshire and Peterborough; Assessment teams across Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, responsiblefor carrying out child and family and other assessments of need under s.17 and s.47 of the Children Act, 1989; The Family Safeguarding service across Cambridgeshire and Peterborough; Corporate Parenting Services across Cambridgeshire and Peterborough; Adolescentteams working with young people on 'the edge of care' in Cambridgeshire. As noted above, the two authorities work closely together across a number of functions including children's services. The Family Safeguarding service is a relatively new development forCambridgeshire. The authority is a DFE Family Safeguarding trailblazing authority, meaning that funds have been provided to support establishing the practice model. This also means that there are continuing expectations on the authority in relation to delivery.Family Safeguarding is a model of practice that involves the addition of adult-facing practitioners to the children's teams working with children in need and children in need of protection.This post-holder will have lead responsibility for continued deliveryof this project, while ensuring that the areas of service for which the post-holder has operational responsibility continue to operate to a high standard, delivering consistently improved outcomes for children and young people, high standards of safeguarding,with services delivered in a timely way.The post-holder is also responsible for the delivery of targeted early help services across the two local authorities. It is important that these services operate in such a way to ensure that they: Improve long termoutcomes for children and young people and in particular, ensure that emerging needs and difficulties are addressed at an early stage; Work effectively with broader partner agencies to ensure that the assessment of needs and delivery of services are activitiesthat are appropriately shared across the partnership; Enable the targeting of scarce local authority resources towards those children and young people with the most complex needs, and who might otherwise require more specialist support [for example, by Children'sSocial Care]; Work closely with specialist services to enable the effective stepping down of children and young people into targeted and, hopefully, universal provision.The post-holder is also responsible for the operation of the Integrated Front Door, includingthe Missing, Exploited and Trafficked and Early Help Hubs, as well as the MASH. This service operates across the two local authority areas, and works very closely with the Customer Service Centre, which undertakes some initial screening activity. This is acomplex system that relies on a number of elements working consistently and well together to ensure that the service as a whole signposts children and young people to early help or other sources of support as appropriate, alongside ensuring that our responseto children and young people where there are indications that they may be at risk of significant harm is appropriate and timely.There is a single Emergency Duty Team that is operates across Cambridgeshire and Peterborough. This team undertakes all urgent workin order to ensure that children and young people are appropriately safeguarded outside of usual office hours.The post-holder is also accountable for the assessment teams. The assessment teams are responsible for carrying out child and family assessments andchild protection enquiries. These teams operate across the two local authorities, and it is important that they make similar decisions in relation to thresholds and workflow so as to ensure consistency of service for all children and young people.The post-holderis also responsible for corporate parenting services including leaving care services for the two authorities.The post-holder reports to the Director of Children's Services, and the post-holder is required to deputise as appropriate.Minimum compliance requirements:Social Work Qualification Registration with Social Work England DBS Check within 12 months or a DBS registered to the Update ServicePlease contact Chelsie on or call for an informal discussion on the role.