Home Team Manager – Children's Social Care Commissioning
Interim Opportunity | Children Looked After | External Placements & Transformation
Are you an experienced Children's Social Care manager with a strong background in commissioning, brokerage and the external placements market?
I'm currently looking to speak with an experienced Home Team Manager to support a key transformation programme within Children's Social Care, focused on improving outcomes for children and young people in care while securing better value from the external residential placements market.
This is an exciting interim opportunity to play a pivotal role in supporting the transformation of a Home Team responsible for finding suitable homes for children and young people looked after by the local authority.
The Opportunity
Sitting within the Children Looked After (CLA) Commissioning Service, the Home Team plays a critical role in identifying, sourcing and securing appropriate placements for children and young people.
You will provide additional management capacity and resilience during a period of organisational change, supporting the existing Home Team Manager and helping embed new ways of working across the service.
The focus will be on improving commissioning practices, strengthening relationships with external providers, increasing placement-finding efficiency and ensuring the best possible outcomes for children.
Key Responsibilities
- Support the transformation and restructure of the Home Team, helping implement new processes, structures and ways of working.
- Provide management support and operational resilience to a busy home-finding and placement brokerage function.
- Improve the efficiency and effectiveness of placement-finding processes, ensuring children are matched with appropriate homes as quickly as possible.
- Strengthen relationships with independent residential providers and improve market engagement.
- Lead on commercial negotiations with providers, securing appropriate placements at competitive rates while maintaining quality.
- Drive improved value for money across external residential placements.
- Improve information sharing between operational social care teams and commissioning.
- Use placement and market intelligence to identify trends, inform decision-making and support sufficiency planning.
Essential Experience & Skills
I'm particularly interested in candidates who can demonstrate:
- Extensive knowledge of the children's social care external placements market, including residential provision, market pressures, sufficiency and provider operating models.
- Previous experience managing a children's social care brokerage, placement finding or home-finding team.
- A strong understanding of Children Looked After services, statutory processes, care planning and placement decision-making.
- Experience leading service transformation, organisational restructures and implementing new ways of working.
- Excellent commercial negotiation skills, with a track record of securing placements and achieving value for money.
- Experience working with independent residential providers, managing relationships and challenging costs and performance where necessary.
- The ability to analyse placement data, market intelligence and performance information to support strategic decisions.
- Strong stakeholder management skills, with the ability to influence senior leaders, social care operational teams, commissioning colleagues and external providers.
Home Team Manager – Children's Social Care Commissioning employer: Venn Group
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