Responsible Individual, Children's Homes

Do you want to be at the forefront of innovative, needs-led practice and, as a senior leader and expert in your field, champion creative interventions alongside our children in care and care leavers?

We’re supporting children and young people back into a family setting or into the community and adulthood, so if you’re passionate and committed to making a real difference, by ensuring the highest standards of care are in place for our most vulnerable children and young people, then we want to hear from you.

We’re looking for a highly skilled, experienced senior leader to fulfil the requirements of our appointed Responsible Individual (RI) within Gloucestershire Children’s Services. The post holder will support the mobilisation and ongoing operational oversight and line management of our new children’s homes and a large, supported accommodation facility for care leavers, all of which are at different stages within the Ofsted registration process. In addition, and as an expert in this regulatory field, the post holder will be integral to, and support, the quality assurance functions regarding designated, commissioned residential services.   

Having successfully recruited permanent managers and other key positions for our first phase children’s homes, we are making excellent headway in realising our vision to establish a diverse range of local, residential homes for our children in care and care leavers. The foundations are in place, and we are now ready to recruit to this critical senior leadership position.

We are seeking applications from self-motivated professionals who are adept in leading these flagship services to ensure our most vulnerable children and young people are supported to achieve timely permanence. The RI must ensure full compliance at all times regarding the regulatory and statutory requirements across all services in scope and establish mechanisms for continuous service developments which lead to outstanding outcomes. 

To see more information regarding our plans to open new children’s homes, click here.

Right Child, Right Support, Right Time, Every Time

Gloucestershire’s vision is to work together to support families and communities to give every child the best chance of a happy and rewarding life, especially those who need more help.  

Implementation of our ambitious improvement and transformation plans are creating the optimum conditions within which our staff can make a real difference and improve outcomes for children. The investment we’ve committed into our in-house residential strategy demonstrates our commitment to getting this right for our children and young people.

About us

In line with our needs-analysis we are opening children’s homes and a large, supported accommodation facility, all of which will cater for a mix of age ranges (from 9 years upwards) and needs.

All our homes will offer a service to children and young people for whom residential care is a placement of choice and assessed to be the most appropriate resource to enable them to fulfil their potential. We’re committed to working with our statutory partners as part of a trauma-informed, integrated approach which focuses holistically on what needs to change in order to achieve timely permanence. Our health partners have actively invested in our vision and other key partners are on board and committed to working together to achieve the best possible outcomes for our children and young people.

About you

You will have extensive experience of working in statutory social care settings with children and families, including substantial experience of line managing registered children’s homes, ideally all or some of which is within local authority settings. If you are currently a registered manager with significant operational experience in this role, and/or a senior leader already responsible for line managing a number of children’s homes, Gloucestershire would like to hear from you.

The position requires the ideal candidate to have experience of managing substantial budgets, demonstrating an ability to manage tensions between needs and finite resources. It also requires a good understanding of the political context within which local authority children’s services are delivered, as well as the governance structure for children’s services.

There are lots of opportunities for you to join a workforce with great training and career development, supported by our highly regarded Social Work Academy (SWA). As part of this support, we have also appointed a dedicated Specialist Advanced Educator for Residential Care, whose focus is to support each of our children’s homes to develop outstanding services for our children and young people. You will work alongside this professional and contribute towards their line management, alongside the SWA.

As well as your experience of working in and/or line managing children’s homes within this area of regulated service provision, there are some things we require of you to be successfully appointed to this post:

• a relevant leadership/management qualification
• evidence of continued professional development
• a full driving licence and willingness to drive
• enhanced DBS clearance

Interviews will be held on the 4th April 2025

For an informal chat about this role, please email ChildrenHomeRecruitment@gloucestershire.gov.uk and someone will get in touch with you and respond to any questions you may have.

We reserve the right to close an advertisement earlier than the stated closing date if we receive a suitable number of applications or fill the vacancy/vacancies.