Deputy Manager in Welshpool

Deputy Manager (Independence and Transitions)

Amberleigh Care is an employee owned, specialist therapeutic child care and education service. We are not the same as other residential child care settings in that we have a very defined profile of young people – we do one thing – and we are experts in that field. This means that we do not offer emergency placements, we have very carefully matched and long-term stable placements. Our working model (therapeutic community) informs the way staff and trained and supported and our multidisciplinary teams are diverse in age, gender, experiences and backgrounds. It works – for children, for staff and for placing local authorities.

This role is based in Welshpool, Powys, the site is registered for up to 19 boys, 12 in the ‘main house’ and 7 places at ‘Nant’ – our separate accommodation for progression of the boys journey with us.

All applicants should have the right to work in the UK as Amberleigh Care are unable to sponsor any visa applications at this time.

Responsibilities:

• In essence you will be part of a team of carers (divided into sub teams), mostly flexible office hours but some contribution to a rolling rota to provide ongoing oversight, care and support to the young people and staff.
• The home has a Registered Manager, a Deputy Registered Manager, supporting the management of the site overall and a second (this role) Deputy Manager (Independence and Transitions). This management ‘trio’ oversees the management of the care component of operations, but also the integration of education and therapy as part of the therapeutic community approach.
• This second Deputy role takes responsibility for the day to day oversight of Nant, the separate accommodation for older boys/ boys further progressed in their journey, whilst ensuring that Nant remains part of the whole site.
• This role has a focus on independence progression and also transition support and planning across the entire therapeutic community – so most of this work is focussed at Nant, but it also has elements of contribution across the wider system. This includes extensive involvement with external agencies: LAs, work experience, colleges etc
• Safeguarding and managing boundaries is a key part of the role – but we do this with very open communication and active use of relationships – we have very low levels of incidents, safeguarding referrals or more extreme challenging behaviours.
• There is the line management/supervision of a sub-group of the wider staff team (at Nant), as well as oversight of planning, coordination, record keeping, reporting and other regulatory activities, as well as maintaining internal processes and timetables.
• The role is varied from hour to hour, day to day – on one level it is about supporting staff with developmentally appropriate (re)parenting of and support to the boys. At the same time, the focus on independence is balanced with nurture and boundaries. Individual responses but within a placement journey framework.
• This is a very visible role with the young people with high levels of relational involvement day to day.
• This is work based on the relationships between everyone – boys, staff, up, down and sideways – we place a lot of support on helping staff develop their own self-awareness in relationship to others.

Requirements:

• We are interested to hear from people with a wider range of experiences and backgrounds but residential care experience will be essential, experience of therapeutic approaches is highly desirable.
• A good grounding in child development, attachment, trauma, behaviour management and related skills will be essential, but we will provide a wide range of technical training (on our client group and group living model) as part of ongoing CPD and support.
• We require good English and IT communication skills and the ability to communicate with young people, staff and external agencies in both planned and responsive ways.
• You need to be over 21 years of age – but there is no upper limit.
• You need to hold a full driving licence (essential)
• A sense of humour, life skills, broad interests, liking young people, resilience, creativity, problem solving etc – the boys need a variety of role models around them.

Reward:

• We offer some of the highest hourly rates of pay in our sector and because of our working model (with Waking Night roles) our staff are not required to ‘sleep in’. We think this is important for work life balance
• The Directors all work in the organisation across both sites – so there is very visible, accessible and involved leadership
• There are very extensive career development opportunities – access to QCF 5 as standard for management roles, degree qualifications for those that want this, and a very wide range of in house and external training and events.
• As specialist practice settings, we are part of several rich networks that allow our staff to get out and about and visit other services
• Staff (and boys) have a very big say in the decision making in our service, both day to day and more longer term. One method is our annual employee survey which informs our service plan…. Have a look at what staff told us in 2025 https://www.amberleighcare.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Employee-Survey-Results-Staff-Report-2025.pdf
• We provide all the usual benefits and perks – contributory pension, annual leave that builds with service, employee assistance scheme, loyalty and recruitment bonuses.
• This is a values based service, doing specialist work that really makes successful difference to the lives of the young people.