Practice Improvement Manager in Bolton

Essential Requirement: DBS, Registered with SW England plus 3 years post qualification experience.

Essential Qualification: Must have a Social Work Qualification and registered with Social Work England.

The Role

Do you want to join a dynamic, ambitious and caring team at the heart of transforming services for children, young people and families in Bolton? This is an exciting opportunity to play a pivotal role in shaping and supporting Bolton's Families First transformation. As Practice Improvement Manager, you will play a pivotal leadership role in driving high-quality, evidence-informed practice across Bolton Children's Services. Reporting to the Principal Social Worker, you will provide professional leadership for practice standards, learning and continuous improvement, embedding Bolton's practice model across our children’s and multi-agency workforce.

Working closely with senior leaders, managers and frontline practitioners, you will provide high support and high challenge and contribute to strategic planning, playing a significant role in strengthening Bolton's learning culture. As Bolton's lead for Research in Practice, you will champion curiosity, critical reflection and evidence-informed approaches, helping to create a workforce that is confident, skilled and committed to delivering the very best outcomes for children, young people and families.

You will also build and maintain strong professional networks locally, regionally and nationally, representing Bolton within partnership and sector forums and ensuring that emerging research, policy and sector developments are translated into local practice and service improvement. This is an exciting opportunity for a credible and values-driven leader who is passionate about social work practice, motivated by learning and improvement, and committed to making a lasting difference to the lives of children, young people and families.

This role sits at the heart of Bolton's Families First transformation. It offers a unique opportunity to influence practice, shape organisational learning and support a culture where high-quality relationships, reflective practice and continuous improvement drive better outcomes for children and families.

About You

You are an experienced and credible registered social worker with a strong professional identity and a passion for raising practice standards and improving outcomes for children, young people and families. You bring extensive experience of working in statutory children's services and a clear understanding of what good, ethical and evidence informed practice looks like.

You have a strong grasp of adult learning theory and learning transfer principles and are skilled at turning insight from quality assurance, performance data, audits and frontline feedback into effective, solution focused practice improvement activity. You are confident leading improvement both reactively, in response to identified issues, and proactively, anticipating risk and supporting early, preventative learning.

You are a respected influencer who can provide professional challenge and support at all levels, including confidently challenging managers and senior leaders where practice falls below expected standards. You are skilled in report writing, facilitation, presentation and communication, with the ability to translate complex findings, legislation and research into meaningful, practice relevant learning.

You are committed to developing a strong learning culture aligned with Bolton's practice approach. You have experience of designing, delivering and evaluating training, workshops, reflective learning opportunities and coaching that enable learning to be embedded into day to day practice through supervision, reflection and feedback.

Collaborative by nature, you value partnership working and actively build local, regional and national networks to influence and inform ongoing improvement. Organised and resilient, you are able to manage multiple workstreams and competing priorities while maintaining a clear focus on quality, learning and impact. Above all, you share Bolton's values and are motivated by making a difference, modelling curiosity, accountability and professional integrity in everything you do.

About Us

This is your opportunity to join us at an exciting time as we have strong ambitions for the borough. Bolton is a great place to work. We are a welcoming organisation that wants to contribute to a place where people feel active, connected and prosperous. We are passionate about improving the outcomes and experience of Bolton people. We want Bolton to be a vibrant place built on strong cohesive communities, successful businesses and healthy, engaged residents.

As an employer we want to thank our employees for their hard work and commitment, by giving them the opportunity to access a range of exclusive rewards and benefits, discounts, exclusive gym membership prices, salary sacrifice schemes, generous annual leave allowance, flexible work opportunities, access to a Pension Scheme, a range of employee wellbeing and support services.

We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of vulnerable adults and young people and expect all staff and volunteers to share this commitment. DBS (Disclosure and Barring Service) clearance - this post is covered by the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (amended in 2013). Employment offers are conditional subject to satisfactory clearances. For roles where a criminal records check from the DBS is required, this includes satisfactory clearance of this check. The possession of a criminal record will not necessarily bar an individual from working with us. This will depend on the nature of the position and the circumstances and background of an individual's offence/s.