Team Manager (Internal applicants only)

This role is being offered as a 6-month secondment – please ensure you have your line manager’s permission before applying.

Closing Date: 24th September 2026

Interview Date(s): 5th October 2026

Are you ready to lead with purpose and make a real difference in children’s lives?

We’re looking for a passionate, confident, and experienced Social Work Team Manager to join our fast-paced Screening Team — the frontline of safeguarding and protection for children and families in our OUTSTANDING authority. This is your chance to step into a key leadership role where your decisions shape safer futures, drive excellent practice, and support a high-performing team of dedicated professionals.

You're a qualified social worker with a proven track record in child protection and frontline practice, confident in your judgment and driven by a strong ethical compass. You're ready to step into leadership—or build on existing management experience—with the tools to support, challenge, and develop a team to be their very best.

About the Role

You will understand the complexity of the statutory child protection processes as set out in legislation and statutory guidance and evidence how you have applied these in practice

This is a fantastic opportunity for individuals looking to develop their leadership skills, take on new challenges, and make a meaningful impact in a dynamic and supportive environment.

Applying thresholds and child protection processes across both public and private law cases, while providing practice support when required. Leads and supports a team of screening social workers, fostering a positive, collaborative, and high performing culture that promotes continuous improvement. Oversees the allocation and progression of contacts and referrals, ensuring thresholds are applied consistently and that service targets and quality standards are achieved. Builds and maintains strong internal and external partnerships to support effective and timely information sharing, enabling informed decision making and positive outcomes for children and families. Uses performance data and key performance indicators to drive quality, efficiency, and throughput, embedding a data informed approach across the team. Provides clear and confident leadership by chairing complex meetings, leading service development initiatives, and making advanced safeguarding decisions within a fast paced environment. Identifies and supports training and development needs, ensuring practitioners are equipped to deliver high quality, child focused services, including chairing strategy discussions where required to ensure timely and appropriate responses to safeguarding concerns.

An enhanced with barred list DBS check is required for this post.

For information on our approach to the recruitment of ex-offenders, please see our policy statement.

About You

To apply for this post, you must be able to evidence in your application how you meet the following criteria

• Social Work degree or equivalent, e.g. CQSW, DipSW (with specialism in children’s services), approved by
• Social Work England and evidence of continuing professional development.
• You will be a qualified social worker with extensive statutory experience focused on applying threshold and applying Child protection processes including public and private law, stepping into support and practice if needed.
• You will demonstrate your ability to support others including social workers, alternatively qualified staff and students and have experience of providing case work supervision
• You will have strong communication and leadership skills, able to confidently chair complex meetings and lead important pieces of development work
• You will demonstrate your ability to thrive in a fast-paced environment, managing competing demands, meeting tight deadlines and keeping a focus on the child’s needs and you will understand the complexity of the statutory child protection processes as set out in legislation and statutory guidance and evidence how you have applied these in practice
• You will have experience of making decisions at an advanced level being accountable for recommended outcomes that safeguard children and you will have used performance data to drive your practice and the practice and throughput of others to not only meet key performance indicators, but ensure timely responses to children and young people where there are immediate and non-immediate safeguarding concerns

In addition, we also expect you to share our commitment to our values and to delivering accessible and inclusive services which meet the needs of all of our residents. You will be asked to demonstrate your understanding of these commitments as part of the selection process.

Reasonable adjustments will be considered for applicants with a disability. We are a Disability Confident Employer.

Interested in Flexible Working?

We are open to discussions about flexible working, which may include part time working, job sharing, term-time working, flexible start and finish times, and hybrid working, depending on the requirements of the role and the service. If you would like to discuss the possible flexible working options that might be applicable to this role, please contact the person named below.

For more information or an informal discussion, please contact

Chelsee Brown, Assistant Service Manager

Email: [email hidden]

How to Apply

At Leicestershire County Council we’re looking for top talent from all walks of life. Whoever you are, wherever you’re from, and whatever your background - we care about what you bring to our organisation, not just what’s on your CV. That’s why we’ve designed a recruitment process that’s fair, accessible, and focused on potential. And with benefits that support people at every age and stage of life, we make sure you can thrive - both personally and professionally.

If you share our passion to make a difference for the people of Leicestershire, we’d love to hear from you. Click the apply button to submit your application, ensuring that you upload a supporting statement that explains how you meet the criteria listed in the ‘About You’ section above. Without this information, we won’t be able to assess your suitability for the role, and your application will be rejected. For tips on how to write your statement, see the How to Apply section on our career site.

We reserve the right to close this vacancy early if we receive sufficient applications for the role. Therefore, if you are interested, please submit your application as early as possible.

If you have any technical issues when trying to apply for this post or you want to request an application pack in an alternative format, please contact our Employee Service Centre by telephoning 0300 3030222 (select option 2) or raising a ticket via our online portal: https://emss.org.uk/support.

By applying for this post, you agree to our Terms and Conditions.