Provider Quality Assurance Officer (Children's Brokerage & Specialist Placements) - x3 Posts
PO2: £41,967 rising in annual increments to £44,862 pa LW
Hybrid Working (includes extensive nationwide travel)
Permanent / Full Time / 35 Hours
About Lambeth Children Services:
Lambeth is a borough of huge diversity, strength, and possibility. Lambeth is home to approximately 63,000 children aged 0-18, representing nearly 20% of our borough’s population. Our Lambeth partnerships have the highest ambitions for our children and want them to grow up to be happy, safe and thriving in supportive communities. We have a rich network of good and outstanding schools, a passionate voluntary community sector and an exciting youth and play offer. Children growing up in Lambeth are surrounded by beautiful green spaces and a borough with a rich history, arts, and music scene.
Despite this, our children also face challenges and adversity. There are several health and wellbeing indicators that are higher in Lambeth than other boroughs, including children in need due to parent disability, first time entrants to youth justice system, and children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities. We have significant demand for mental health and emotional wellbeing provision and have critical challenges regarding placement sufficiency for our Children Looked After. Lambeth is the fifth most densely populated borough in the UK with sharp contrasts between wealth and poverty. It is estimated that 27% of our children and young people are living in poverty, rising to 43% when housing costs are factored in; we know Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated challenges for many families in Lambeth and created a new set of problems for others.
It’s an incredibly exciting time to come and work in Lambeth. There’s plenty to get your teeth into – be it leading the implementation of our strategy for youth services, overseeing the transformation of our emotional health and wellbeing provision, or presiding over the development of a new team delivering efficient brokerage for our teams.
We’re passionate about integration of services and teams across education, health and social care to ensure our population can access services that are joined-up and seamless. All of these roles play very important roles in partnership development with internal and external stakeholders.
A message from The Assistant Director
Successful applicants should have a drive to get things done and be able to promote and facilitate innovation, creativity, and continuous improvement of children placement services.
Successful applicant should have demonstrable experience of quality assurance within children’s residential services including file and paperwork audits, excellent communication skills and in particular the ability to engage with young people and their networks.
Successful applicant must have proven report writing skills, the ability to provide recommendations on how to improve our services for the benefit of the young people in our care, understanding of safeguarding and GDPR in practice and the ability to travel and undertake quality assurance visits nationwide at short notices.
About You:
The role will involve quality assuring the safeguarding standards and practices of children and young people in care as well as care leavers placements as well as monitoring unregistered and unregulated provisions. You would be required to produce reports about each visit providing an opinion (with supporting evidence) as to whether children are effectively safeguarded, and the home is being conducted in a way that promotes children's wellbeing.
You will also be providing recommendations for the improvement and enhancement of services in the interests of the children and young people we care for ensuring that the voices of children and young people are heard and reflected in reporting. You will communicate with, and offer support and guidance to external placement providers, directors and managers regarding compliance, continual improvement, and best safeguarding and care standard practices.
You must have significant experience of working in the children’s care sector either as a manager of a children’s home, social worker, regulator or as an independent (Children’s Homes Regulation 44) visitor for another organisation. You must have an excellent understanding of the Children’s Home (England) Regulation 2015, quality standards, guidance and social care common inspection framework. The ideal person must have significant experience of 16+/leaving care services and its legislation and guidance.
Why Lambeth:-
- Fantastic, modern working environment in the award-winning Lambeth Town Hall and Civic Centre buildings
- Competitive Salaries
- Up to 35 days annual leave, dependent upon continuous service
- 5 Minutes from London Underground and excellent transport links into the centre of London
- Hybrid/Flexible working
- Cycle to Work Scheme (including City Bike Hire scheme)
- Attractive Local Government Pension Scheme
We are a Stonewall diversity champion; a Living Wage Employer and we guarantee to interview all disabled candidates who meet the minimum criteria of the role. Please click here for a full list of our accreditations.
If you have any queries in relation to this job vacancy, please contact the Assistant Director: Andrews Osei, AOsei1@lambeth.gov.uk
Successful candidates will be asked to apply for an Enhanced Certificate from the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS). Further information about the DBS can be found at www.homeoffice.gov.uk/agencies-public-bodies/dbs.
You will also be required to undertake a Cifas check. Further information about Cifas can be found at www.cifas.org.uk
Please note we operate an anonymised application process. If you are uploading your CV or a personal statement, please remove your personal details and replace these with your unique candidate application number.
Interested , click on the apply button and complete an on-line application, explicitly evidencing in the supporting statement field how you meet the shortlist criteria marked with an ‘A’, along with uploading your CV.
Job Description and Specification
Closing Date: Sunday 5th May 2024 at midnight
Lambeth aims for quality services and equal opportunities for all and is committed to safer recruitment
Proud member of the Disability Confident employer scheme
Disability Confident
About Disability Confident
A Disability Confident employer will generally offer an interview to any applicant that declares they have a disability and meets the minimum criteria for the job as defined by the employer. It is important to note that in certain recruitment situations such as high-volume, seasonal and high-peak times, the employer may wish to limit the overall numbers of interviews offered to both disabled people and non-disabled people. For more details please go to
Disability Confident.
