Interim Turnaround Childrens Home Manager in Durham

Location: Consett, Durham

Salary: Competitive rates

Job Type: Consultant role, interim for a minimum of 3 months (Contractor)

Hours of work: Typically, Monday to Friday

Start Date: Subject to satisfactory DBS check

Overview: The client is working with Delphi Care Solutions, an established, innovative health care improvement company that also specialises in OfSTED projects. The client is seeking an experienced interim turnaround children's home manager to support one of their children's homes. The client provides trauma-informed care and uses positive behaviour support strategies to assist children with Social, Emotional and Behavioural difficulties (SEBD).

Job Details: Reports to: Responsible individual. The interim turnaround manager is to take hands-on operational control of the children's home on an interim basis to stabilise safeguarding, staffing, practice, and compliance, and to deliver a time-bound recovery plan that returns the home to safe, sustainable operation and regulatory readiness.

The client is seeking an experienced professional with a strong track record in turnaround and recovery within children's residential services. This is not a purely advisory role; the turnaround manager is expected to provide visible leadership on site, set non-negotiable standards, and drive measurable improvement by supporting the client whose service is under pressure, experiencing poor outcomes, regulatory concern, leadership instability, and safeguarding issues.

The candidate will work alongside the client to stabilise the service, address the risks, strengthen leadership and practice, and drive sustainable improvement, with scope for short-term intervention or longer-term engagement depending on need.

Responsibilities include:

• Lead and support turnaround and recovery of a children's home experiencing operational, quality, safeguarding, and leadership challenges.
• Assess service risk, practice, and performance to identify immediate priorities and non-negotiables for safety.
• Stabilise the service through hands-on leadership support, clear direction, and practical problem solving.
• Develop and implement focused improvement and a recovery plan with clear actions, timescales, and accountability.
• Provide professional challenge and constructive support.
• Support the service to embed sustainable practice, moving beyond short-term fixes to long-term improvement.
• Strengthen governance, oversight, and quality assurance processes to prevent recurrence of failure.
• Address repeated or entrenched issues, including poor staff culture, high incidents, weak management systems, or compliance drift.
• Model and reinforce strong safeguarding practice and child-centred decision making.
• Work flexibly across a short-term intervention.
• Direct day-to-day running of the home (rotas, deployment, routines, practice standards).
• Implement immediate safeguarding controls and practice changes.
• Recommend HR actions (capability, conduct, suspension, redeployment) to HR/RI for decision.
• Pause admissions (subject to RI/GEXEC gate) where safety/stability thresholds are not met.
• Lead multi-agency escalation where children's plans are unsafe or unrealistic.

Requirements: About you. You will be an experienced children's home manager with a proven track record in turnaround, recovery, stabilisation, and underperforming or high-risk services. The successful candidate will have strong leadership credibility and will be able to influence, challenge, and support senior leaders and staff teams through periods of difficulty and change.

Essential Requirements:

• Experience in senior leadership, management, or consultancy roles within residential childcare and clear evidence of turnaround achievements.
• Experience of working in challenging environments and able to work under pressure.
• Achieved a Level 5 in leadership and management for residential childcare.
• Achieved a Level 3 or above in residential childcare diploma.
• Ability to complete essential documents that will meet Ofsted approval (statement of purpose, Workforce Development, Business Continuity, risk assessments, placement plans).
• Strong understanding of the Social Care Common Inspection Framework (SCCIF) and the Children's Home Regulations 2015.
• Previous experience of stabilising a children's home from crisis to Ofsted compliance.
• Knowledge of positive behaviour support and PACE techniques.
• Excellent leadership, organisational, and communication skills.
• Previous training in specialised areas.
• Ability to work independently and as part of a team.
• Excellent interpersonal skills to collaborate effectively with diverse stakeholders.
• Proven ability to develop and implement quality improvement initiatives and utilise reflective practice to make positive changes.
• Enhanced DBS registered on the update system.