Team Manager - Family Safeguarding Court Lead

Are you an experienced Team Manager or Senior Social Worker looking for an opportunity to shape and improve court practice across Children's Services? Do you have experience in quality assurance and a track record of fostering a learning environment that supports social workers to enhance their practice? We are seeking an exceptional practitioner to take on a new and influential Court Lead role, driving quality, performance, and best practice across pre-proceedings and care proceedings.

If so, then this could be your next challenge. We have an opportunity for you to take the lead in the development and implementation of an overarching quality assurance framework to embed consistent, high-quality practice across all court-related work for Cambridgeshire County Council's Children's Service. This is a new permanent Team Manager position within our Family Support and Safeguarding Service.

For an initial period of approximately 12 months, the successful candidate will undertake the Court Lead function across the service, responsible for overseeing the progression of court work, ensuring that care proceedings and pre-proceedings progress efficiently, within statutory timescales, and to a consistently high standard of practice. Once this programme of work is complete, the role is expected to transition into a Family Help Team Manager position, subject to the future needs of the service and the implementation of the Families First model.

You will play a pivotal role in driving performance, reducing delay, and strengthening the quality of court work, ensuring that care planning is robust, child-focused, and legally sound. As Court Lead you will act as the key link between Children's Services, the judiciary and courts, Legal Services, Cafcass, social work teams and managers. You will oversee and track all court- related activity, monitoring legal trackers to ensure compliance with timescales and practice standards and promote best practice and consistency across all court work, ensuring the child's voice, wishes, and feelings remain central to all planning and decision-making.

We will be looking for you to embed a culture of continuous improvement and reflective practice, ensuring continuous performance management and driving high-quality practice across both Public and Private Law proceedings. You will model excellent practice and provide constructive challenge where standards are not being met, supporting colleagues to achieve consistently high-quality outcomes. Working collaboratively with Team Managers, Service Managers, and the Head of Service to ensure the appropriate support, challenge, and development are in place to improve practice and outcomes for children and families.

This is a unique opportunity to shape the future of court practice within Cambridgeshire's Children's Services. You will have the autonomy to influence service-wide improvement, work alongside experienced leaders and legal professionals, and play a key role in ensuring the best possible outcomes for children and families; don't delay, apply today!, Quality assure social work statements, parenting assessments, court reports, and care plans, ensuring evidence is robust, analytical, child-centred, and legally compliant.

Support Team Managers and practitioners to improve the quality of assessments, report writing, and evidence presented within court proceedings. Drive performance and challenge drift in case planning by proactively identifying, addressing, and escalating risks, delays, and non-compliance, working closely with Service Managers and Team Managers to remove barriers, improve timeliness, and strengthen outcomes for children and families.

Maintain and oversee legal trackers, ensuring accurate monitoring of case progression and identifying delays or risks at the earliest opportunity to ensure compliance with statutory timescales, court directions, and Public Law Outline requirements. Act as the key link between Children's Services, Legal Services, Cafcas