Job Description

Southampton is a city of hope, history and diversity. The city is located on the South Coast within an hour of London, twenty minutes to the beautiful New Forest and only 30 minutes to the fabulous beaches of Bournemouth and Poole.Southampton is a city of culture, with a diverse population, vibrant arts and music scene, a premiership football club and a busy international port. Southamptons community is exciting eclectic.Southampton, like many cities in the UK, has its challenges austerity and the cost of living crisis is affecting many families. The city has a high volume of need and risk and needs the very best from its childrens services partnership.Childrens Services in Southampton has been on an amazing transformation journey and in 2023 were assessed by Ofsted to be Good in all areas, with Outstanding Leadership, after many challenging years. In 2024 Southamptons Childrens Services where shortlisted for three LGC Awards 'Best Place to work', ' Innovation in Recruitment' and 'Innovation in Retention'. Southampton Childrens Services is a great place to work. We refer to ourselves as the Southampton Family as we are close, super supportive, appropriately challenging and love and care for each other and for the children, young people and families we support.The Young Peoples Service is a fantastic service to be part of. It is challenging, creative and cutting edge. It brings together social workers for vulnerable adolescents, youth justice, youth work and edge of care work. The service has a well-respected and high performing Youth Justice Service who have a huge focus out of court diversion and access to skills, learning and employment.An important part of the Young People's Service is our Contextual Safeguarding Team. This is an innovative partnership with the Police, delivering a Risk Outside the Home framework, with Carlene Firmin and Durham University. We have recently launched the Youth Endowment Fund-evaluated Focused Deterrent. Our edge of care approach is supported by our highly respected Building Bridges service, supporting families using DDP and PACE.The Young People's Service has some unique assets including a vibrant young peoples hub at the Civic Centre where the service is based. This combines a youth club, cafxc3xa9, learning rooms, gym and music room, a pizza van to support youth engagement and a VW Camper van for Youth Outreach and Overnight Breaks for our young people.This is a unique role for a unique person. We are looking for exceptional leader who can combine the delivery of high quality and compliant statutory social work tasks with compassion, creativity and the ability to continue to build a strong tram. The successful candidate will be able to get the very best from the local partnership to achieve the very best for our young people. We welcome creativity, innovation, the ability to connect with your people, teams, services and local third sector partners.This postholder will be responsible for:1 Two statutory case holding social work teams supporting young people where there are significant concerns about contextual safeguarding or a risk of an entry to care. This service works with approximately 100 - 120 young people, and the service is made up 2 Team Managers, 2 Assistant Managers and 12 social workers.2 An adolescent prevention service providing an early help offer and approach. This service is made up of a Team Coordinator and 4 Young Peoples Practitioners.3 Building Bridges Service, a secondary allocated intervention service supporting edge of care, foster care placement stability and reunifications. This service is made up of Team Manager, Assistant Team Manager and 1 Social Worker and 6 Family Practitioners.Southamptons young people have told us they need someone in this role who can:1 Problem solve the most complex of problems.2 Be bold and brave in representing and advocating on their behalf.3 Bring the best out of the whole service so that services are timely, effective, and efficient.4 Do the basics brilliantly.5 A great communicator so that every knows whats going on.6 prioritise customer care making people feel important and listen to.7 Compassionately have difficult discussions.8 Understand and work with teenagers.8 Make Southamptons Young People Service the best in the country.The successful candidate will need to be a qualified Social Woker, have successfully led teams at team manager or Service Manager level for three years, have a track record of high performance in a local authority with high demand, be crazy about Teenagers and have great leadership qualities.If you are interested in this post please call us or come and see us. We would love to show what we do.What we can offer you:Here at SCC we have a range of different perks and benefits, a few examples can be found below.

• A generous local government pension scheme.
• Flexible working (role dependant). Up to 13 days of Flexi Leave.
• Hybrid working arrangements (role dependant).
• Online Benefits salary sacrifice schemes, benefits and discounts.
• Great local transport links.
• Employee assistance programme with access to our health wellbeing and support.

For further information on our benefits package please visit:Contact details for informal discussion:To arrange a call or a visit please contact Head of Young Peoples Services 07714440028.Recruitment contact details:Email:
Tel: 023 8083 4033For more information about SCC please visit
Follow us on social media for regular updates on our featured jobs and latest news.OrganisationSouthampton City CouncilService AreaYoung Peoples ServiceJob LocationCivic CentreContract LengthPermanentWork HoursFull time - 37 hours per weekSalaryxc2xa363,200 - xc2xa371,544 per annumSpecial RequirementsEnhanced DBS will be requiredClosing Date09/03/2025Job Reference15466Documents(PDF, 210.67kb)

Southampton City Council