Interim Turnaround Childrens Home Manager in North East

The client is working with Delphi Care Solutions, an established health care improvement company that also specialises in OfSTED projects. They are seeking an experienced interim turnaround children’s home manager to support one of their children’s homes, providing trauma-informed care and using positive behaviour support strategies for children with Social, Emotional and Behavioural difficulties (SEBD).

Job Details

Reports to: Responsible individual

The interim turnaround manager will take hands-on operational control of the children’s home to stabilise safeguarding, staffing, practice, and compliance, delivering a time-bound recovery plan that returns the home to safe, sustainable operation and regulatory readiness. The candidate will work alongside the client to stabilise the service, address risks, strengthen leadership and practice, and drive sustainable improvement.

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 where safety/stability thresholds are not met.
• Lead multi-agency escalation where children’s plans are unsafe or unrealistic.

Requirements

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.