Service Lead (Leaving Care)

Hours Per Week: 36 hours

Base Location: Ashton Old Library

Assessment Date: 6th & 9th March 2026

The Role

Are you passionate about making a real difference in the lives of children and families? Do you bring compassion, curiosity, collaboration, conversation, and courage to your practice? If so, Tameside is looking for you. Join us as Service Lead for Leaving Care and help shape brighter futures for our care experienced young people.

We’re looking for a strong, inspiring leader who’s passionate about delivering exceptional outcomes for young people transitioning from care to independence, with support. This isn’t just about meeting statutory standards it’s about driving a service that aspires to exceed them. You’ll empower teams to continuously improve, champion young people’s voices, and make sure they play a central role in shaping the support they receive.

This is an exciting opportunity to lead our Leaving Care Service as we expand and strengthen our offer. You’ll bring significant experience of working with care experienced young people, a solid understanding of the legislative and practice landscape, and a deep commitment to ensuring they have stable homes, safe relationships, strong mental health support and pathways into education, training and employment.

With your expertise and compassion, you’ll help build a consistent, outstanding service rooted in high quality safeguarding, excellent practice and our Heart of Support approach. This is an exciting opportunity to join us on our improvement journey. The work is varied, offering you the chance to develop new skills, gain valuable experience, and progress in your career.

You will be supported by the Head of Service with a comprehensive induction, ongoing training, and regular supervision to help you reach your full potential.

About You

We are looking for a strong, credible leader who has passion and determination to empower, enable, motivate and develop the workforce, fostering a positive organisational culture to achieve our ambitious improvement plan to achieve better outcomes for children and families.

The successful candidate will demonstrate:

• Openness to possibilities
• Ability to collaborate
• Belief in your team and people
• Personal resilience and tenacity
• Ability to create and sustain commitment
• Results and outcomes focused solutions
• Ability to learn continuously
• Evidence based decision making

About Us

Message from Jill Colbert, Director of Children’s Services: I joined the council at the beginning of 2025 and was instantly charmed by the warmth, openness, and energy of colleagues. I came to Tameside for one reason; because I know we can do fantastic things for our families here. We’re a children’s service on a significant improvement journey. We know what needs to be different for our children and families and we’re ambitious to deliver that change.

We have a growing range of specialist services for children, where you can test and grow your skills and practice. We have a Social Work Academy that is led by people who bring passion to learning and who know that the DCS’ of the future are right in front of them. We are working on our progression pathways so that staying in Tameside is rewarded and recognised. We have investment in innovation and improvement from the council so that we can grow services and support for families that we can sustain, from family hubs through to complex safeguarding.

I am so certain that we can build a proud, inclusive and safe climate for great practice to flourish in Tameside. I’d love you to join me on the journey here at Team Tameside.

Our Heart of Support Practice Approach

At Tameside, we believe in:

• Compassion - understanding the lived experiences of children and families.
• Curiosity - asking questions that lead to deeper insight and better outcomes for children.
• Collaboration - working together across services to deliver joined-up support.
• Conversation - listening and engaging meaningfully with children, families and professionals.
• Courage - leading with courage, making bold and compassionate decisions that put children first.

At Tameside, we are committed to ensuring all our Citizens lead long, fulfilling and healthy lives. We are committed to supporting economic growth, providing high quality health and care services, protecting our most vulnerable and creating strong and supportive, self-sufficient communities.

We recognise that our people drive our success and enable the organisation to deliver on its vision, purpose and priorities, and that our people are our most important resource and asset. Our values underpin our practice and behaviours, and are at the heart of everything that we do; and we understand that how we do things is just as important as what we do. We pride ourselves on living by our STRIVE values of Support, Trust, Respect, Integrity, Value Diversity and Engage. Our values underpin our practice and behaviours and are at the heart of everything that we do. How we do things are just as important as what we do.

Our employees’ skills, experience and knowledge are essential to our success along with their happiness, wellbeing, commitment, enthusiasm and motivation to be the best they can be.

This position is subject to Enhanced with Barred List Disclosure Procedures. We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people and adults and expect all staff to share this commitment.

If you have completed the GM Elevate (Leadership Development) Programme, please indicate this within the ‘About You’ or ‘Supporting Statement’ section of your application.

Unfortunately, at this time we are not able to offer sponsorship. We are committed to developing a culture which respects individuals, appreciates difference and allows everyone regardless of background to reach their full potential. We are proud to be an accredited disability confident employer. Reasonable Adjustments will be considered in accordance with the Equality Act 2010 in relation to the Job Role Criteria.

Our rewards and benefits package can be viewed here. For further information about this role please contact the recruiting manager on 0161 342 2339 or nazia.kousar@tameside.gov.uk