Head of Service – Quality Assurance
Lead a whole system workforce strategy as Principal Social Worker, overseeing end to end approaches to attract, recruit, develop and retain a high quality, permanent workforce aligned to service demand and transformation priorities.
- Drive sustainable recruitment and retention solutions, including targeted campaigns, growth‑own pipelines (e.g. apprenticeships/ASYE), and innovative approaches to hard‑to‑recruit roles, ensuring reduced reliance on agency staff.
- Line management responsibility for the Learning Academy and will champion professional standards and practice excellence, embedding a strong practice framework, high quality supervision, and continuous professional development through the Social Work Academy and learning offer.
- Lead service performance and improvement, through inspection preparation and leadership of performance boards.
- Strengthen leadership and career pathways, developing clear progression routes and talent management to build leadership capacity and succession across Children’s Services.
- Strategic oversight of the Multi‑Agency Child Protection Team, ensuring expertise of the partnership to oversee the most at‑risk vulnerable children.
Who We’re Looking For
We welcome interest from practitioners who can demonstrate:
- A Social Work qualification and registration with Social Work England (at least 3 years qualified)
- Significant frontline child protection experience and strong understanding of statutory safeguarding frameworks.
- Excellent analytical, communication and decision‑making skills.
- A commitment to restorative, strength‑based practice.
- Emotional resilience and the ability to lead in challenging situations.
- Candidates must bring substantial frontline child protection experience and an in‑depth knowledge of the statutory and legislative framework.
Why This Role Matters
This is an exciting strand of the national reforms and provides an opportunity to influence practice at a strategic and operational level, ensuring that children in Plymouth receive the right help at the right time. You will be a key driver of quality, consistency and partnership working across the safeguarding system.
The Disclosure & Barring Service Check requirement for this post is: Enhanced Check + DBS Children’s Barred List & DBS Adult’s Barred List.
We are a flexible employer and provide a variety of working arrangements tailored to the needs of each role.
Plymouth City Council is an equal opportunities employer. All applicants will be considered for employment regardless of age, care experience, disability, gender reassignment, marriage/civil partnership, pregnancy/maternity, race, religion/belief, sex or sexual orientation.
As part of our commitment to promoting equality we offer guaranteed interviews to those who meet the essential criteria and are considered disabled, care experienced or are an Armed Forces Service Leaver within the last two years.
Please note, this role is not eligible for visa sponsorship and we can only consider applicants with existing right to work in the UK.
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