Deputy House Manager in Kent

Are you passionate about transforming the lives of the most vulnerable children? Do you want to be a founding staff member of our new secure school, the first of its kind? Can you see yourself taking responsibility for ensuring the safe functioning of the school, and the care and development of our children and the staff who work with them? Could you bring energy, authority and compassion to the care of the children at the school?

We are offering a uniquely exciting opportunity for a person with experience of children’s residential care, social work or youth justice who is ready for a post in the team responsible for managing the care of the children and staff teams within Oasis Restore, the first secure school in England.

Your role as a Deputy House Manager offers a unique opportunity to be part of a comprehensive team at Oasis Restore, joining us as we continue to recruit a large team of residential staff and onboard a new cohort of students, taking up a crucial role in their care and development. It will be your role to inspire and develop staff practice, manage their activities, utilise our management information systems and provide safety, care and well-being for children while developing a sense of safety and boundaries in their work.

You will be an important figure for children across the school and particularly in one of the three houses, representing a kind, decent and caring source of authority, present and involved in their daily lives. You will be someone who can work well in complex, demanding and emotive situations. You will have excellent relational skills and will be naturally curious and keen to learn about your own and others’ feelings and experiences.

You will be a champion of high standards of Children’s social care, with demonstrable experience of developing practice that delivers to Children’s Homes Quality Standards. You will be someone who can think well under pressure and who can empower and contain others in their work. You will have a powerful belief in the value of restorative work and will be able to hold your hope and compassion for the children in the face of the challenges they will bring.

This role reports into the Residential Leadership team, and works closely with the wider Senior Leadership Team, alongside a team of specialists within education, care, and health. Alongside colleagues, you will manage a large team of Senior and Restore Practitioners.

As a Deputy House Manager, you will have overall responsibility for case management of the children within your flat. This will include quality assurance of all documents relating to the child (including adherence to legislative, regulatory and policy requirements) and all child-facing practice from the Core Team around the child.

Your role will involve a significant responsibility for ensuring high quality standards of care for children and the healthy functioning of the whole school (including the home), chairing handovers, coordinating and ensuring the allocation of staff, managing the rota, holding reportees to account, providing support, presence and decision-making across the day and night, and working with staff to embed and sustain our restorative culture and achieving the very best standards as outlined in Children’s Homes Regulations and Guidance.

You will be a champion of therapeutic practice, placing relationships at the heart of everything you do and be responsible for ensuring excellent standards of care throughout the school. You will be someone who cares about developing others, working on organisational, team, group, family and individual levels to foster real understanding, good relationships and communication, within our culture of benign enquiry.

You will have a mature, reflective approach that aligns with the Restore Framework, our model of practice, aware of the conscious and unconscious impact of this very challenging work and the value of discovering its meaning. You will be committed to finding a way through, and never giving up.