Assistant Service Manager Supervised Family Time – Senior Practitioner in Peterborough

We are seeking a committed and experienced Supervised Family Time Manager to lead and develop our Supervised Family Time service within Children's Social Care. This is a vital role supporting children to maintain safe, positive relationships with their families while ensuring their welfare remains paramount.

To apply for this role you must be a qualified Social Worker registered with Social Work England. You will manage a team of Supervised Family Time Supervisors, ensuring high-quality, child-focused practice that meets statutory guidance and promotes positive outcomes for children and families. This role requires you to be able and willing to work flexible hours including some evenings and weekends. The role also involves travel throughout the county so the ability to travel to places not accessible on public transport is essential. Office base is negotiable and can be discussed at interview.

For more information or an informal discussion about the role please contact Ana Caldararu on 07484021637.

Interviews will be held in person in Huntingdon on 18th May 2026. Appointment to this post will be subject to the outcome of an Enhanced Disclosure obtained through the Disclosure and Barring Service. The Council is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and vulnerable adults and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment.

Our benefits

• A comprehensive wellbeing package to cover all aspects of wellbeing, both in and out of work, which can also be accessed by your family.
• Buy up to 4 weeks additional annual leave (pro‑rata) through our salary sacrifice scheme.
• Take your bank holidays flexibly to better suit your personal circumstances.
• Make Additional Voluntary Contributions (Shared AVCs) to your pension with tax and National Insurance savings.
• Access to development opportunities, apprenticeships and qualified coaches to support your personal and professional growth.
• Paid volunteering hours each year so you can make a positive impact on our community during your normal working day.
• Access to Peer Support Groups through our IDEAL staff equality, diversity and inclusion network.
• Opportunities to nominate and receive Employee Recognition Awards.
• An Our Cambs Rewards account, giving you access to in-store and online discounts as well as our Car Lease and Cycle to Work schemes.

What will you be doing?

In this role you will lead and manage our Supervised Family Time service, providing clear guidance, reflective supervision, and effective performance management to the team. You will ensure that all supervised and supported family time is planned, delivered, and reviewed in line with care plans, court directions, and risk assessments, maintaining a strong focus on safeguarding and the emotional wellbeing of children. You will quality assure family time records, reports, and observational assessments to a high professional standard, working collaboratively with Social Workers, Team Managers, IROs, legal services, and partner agencies. You will contribute to court reports and professional evidence when required and play a key role in developing policies, procedures, and best practice, while managing service capacity, rotas, and resources efficiently. Above all, you will champion reflective, trauma informed, and child centred practice across the service.

About you

You will bring substantial experience of working with children and families in a safeguarding context, alongside strong leadership skills and a solid understanding of child protection legislation, statutory guidance, family court processes and family time practice. Confident in supervising or managing staff within Children's Social Care or a similar setting, you will be skilled at producing clear, analytical reports and contributing to court proceedings. Excellent communication, organisational, and decision making abilities are essential, as is a commitment to equality, diversity, and anti discriminative practice. You will hold a recognised social work qualification and be registered with Social Work England. Experience in service development and quality assurance would be an advantage, as would training in trauma informed practice or attachment based approaches, enabling you to contribute to the continued growth and reflective culture of the service.

About us

Cambridgeshire is a great place to work and live with a diverse population, an urban centre in Cambridge, historic Isle of Ely, Huntingdon and St Ives as well as more rural landscapes. Our four values are central to our culture, driving everything we do. We are proud to serve the diverse communities of Cambridgeshire and want our workforce to be reflective of this diversity, which we firmly believe benefits our colleagues, the organisation and our communities.

If you don't meet every single requirement in the job role but think this could be you, please don't be put off. We are committed to building a workplace that is compassionate and inclusive as well as diverse, so if you think you could be a good candidate for this role please consider applying and speak to the recruiting manager if you have any questions.

Our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy, along with our employee network 'IDEAL' and self‑organised peer support groups help us to foster an inclusive, supportive and safe working environment where people feel valued, respected, and empowered. We collect relevant diversity data for monitoring as part of the recruitment process to understand the diversity of our applicants and monitor any trends throughout the recruitment processes so that we can take meaningful action. We are proud to be a Disability Confident Leader. We fully support providing reasonable adjustments throughout our recruitment process, as well as when you join us, and we encourage candidates to contact the Hiring Manager to discuss any adjustment needs.

Through a Guaranteed Interview Scheme, we will offer an interview to all applicants who disclose a disability and meet the essential criteria for a job vacancy. On your application form you can indicate you are disabled. Some examples of reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process could include additional time to complete an assessment or printing a document on pastel coloured paper with larger font size and line spacing. We would value talking about what might be possible to enable you to join us and thrive, so if there is something that would help you to do your best during your journey with us, please get in touch.

Visit our jobs and careers section to find out more about our wide range of learning and development opportunities; apprenticeships; our wellbeing package; staff benefits; our commitment to equality, diversity and Inclusion.