Registered Manager – Children's Residential Home (EBD) in Nottingham

About the Company

Link3 Recruitment is recruiting on behalf of an established private provider of children's residential care for an experienced, ambitious and highly competent Registered Manager to lead a four-placement children's home in NG15, Nottinghamshire.

About the Role

Registered Manager – Children's Residential Home (EBD)

• Location: Nottinghamshire
• Service: 4-Bed Children's Residential Home
• Job Type: Full-Time, Permanent
• Salary: Competitive, dependent upon experience, occupancy based increases
• Ofsted Rating: Good
• Start: As soon as practicable, subject to safer recruitment and Ofsted requirements

An exceptional opportunity to lead an established children's home into its next chapter.

This is an exciting opportunity for an accomplished children's residential care professional to take leadership of a home with many of the foundations already firmly in place. The home is fully registered for up to four children and young people with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties and received a Good judgement across all areas at its first full Ofsted inspection in June 2026 – including the experiences and progress of children, how well children are helped and protected, and the effectiveness of leaders and managers. The successful candidate will inherit an established staffing structure and a home that has been designed and resourced to provide young people with a genuinely nurturing, therapeutic and aspirational environment. This is not simply a vacancy for somebody to maintain a service. We are looking for a Registered Manager capable of leading its next stage of development.

Responsibilities

The Home

The home is a substantial and extremely well-equipped property offering an environment that combines the warmth of a family home with dedicated spaces for education, development and recreation. Alongside four well-furnished young people's bedrooms, the property benefits from a dedicated cinema room, gaming room, study/education space and quiet/breakout areas. The Statement of Purpose specifically describes dedicated study and quiet spaces, a cinema room and a gaming room with consoles and screens. The home is situated within a residential area of Hucknall with good transport links into Nottingham and access to a wide range of local leisure, education, health and community facilities. Most importantly, this is a home that we want young people to regard as their home – a place where they feel safe, valued, listened to and able to progress.

The Opportunity

Following a planned change in management, we are looking for an experienced Registered Manager who can provide stability, leadership and clear direction to the service. The home currently has no young people in placement, creating a relatively unique opportunity for the incoming Registered Manager to be directly involved in shaping the next cohort of placements from the outset. Our priority is not occupancy at any cost. The new Manager will have a central role in assessing referrals, completing robust impact and compatibility assessments, working with commissioners and social workers, and ensuring that every placement is appropriately matched against the home's Statement of Purpose, the existing staff skillset and, as occupancy grows, the needs and risks of other young people living within the home. The home's existing approach requires comprehensive assessment of referrals, consideration of staff capability and compatibility with other young people, alongside impact and needs risk assessments before admission. We want to build towards a full and sustainable home – but to do so safely, thoughtfully and around the right young people.

Our Approach to Care

Our ethos is centred around empowering and nurturing young people. The home adopts a trauma-informed and therapeutic approach for young people who may have experienced trauma, loss and disrupted attachments. Its model incorporates Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP) principles and PACE – Playfulness, Acceptance, Curiosity and Empathy – with the aim of creating emotional safety, strengthening relationships and understanding the needs behind behaviour. We believe in connection before correction. Rather than focusing solely on behaviour modification, staff are encouraged to understand the experiences, emotions and unmet needs that may sit behind behaviour, while maintaining clear, consistent and appropriate boundaries. The successful Registered Manager will therefore need to be capable of embedding a therapeutic culture throughout the home – not simply referencing it within policies.

The Team You Will Lead

You will be joining a home with an established staffing infrastructure rather than having to recruit an entirely new team. The wider operational structure includes deputy/senior leadership and residential childcare staff, with staff receiving mandatory training including safeguarding, PMVA, medication administration, missing-from-care and exploitation-related training. The service also operates regular supervision, appraisal and a training matrix to identify ongoing development requirements. As Registered Manager, you will be expected to develop this team further – creating a culture of accountability, reflective practice, consistency, professional curiosity and high expectations.

Key Responsibilities

The Registered Manager will hold overall responsibility for the safe, effective and compliant operation of the home. This will include:

• Providing inspirational and visible leadership to the staff team and young people.
• Maintaining full compliance with the Children's Homes (England) Regulations 2015, Quality Standards and Ofsted requirements.
• Leading the home's Ofsted registration and regulatory responsibilities.
• Acting as a safeguarding lead and maintaining a strong safeguarding culture; the home's SOP places safeguarding leadership with the Registered Manager alongside the Responsible Individual.
• Leading referral assessment, placement matching, admissions and transition planning.
• Developing appropriate occupancy while ensuring that commercial considerations never override safeguarding or appropriate matching.
• Embedding the home's therapeutic, trauma-informed, DDP/PACE-based approach.
• Ensuring high-quality care plans, placement plans, risk assessments and behaviour support plans.
• Monitoring the outcomes and progress of each young person.
• Leading staff supervision, performance management, development and training.
• Ensuring staffing levels, skills and deployment remain appropriate to the needs of young people.
• Building productive relationships with social workers, placing authorities, education providers, health professionals, families and other stakeholders.
• Maintaining effective Regulation 44 and Regulation 45 quality assurance processes.
• Using audits, incidents, complaints, safeguarding information and outcomes data to drive continuous improvement.
• Maintaining a positive culture in which young people's wishes, feelings and voices genuinely influence the running of their home.
• Working closely with the Responsible Individual and senior leadership team on the home's development plan, performance and long-term success.

The service already operates monthly quality auditing, Regulation 44 monitoring, six-monthly Regulation 45 reviews and an annual development plan, giving the