Are you passionate about ensuring the voices of children are heard?

‘Listening to children – Lighting the way’ is our mandate for continuing to improve the experiences of the children and families with whom we work, such that they are exceptional, everywhere and every time.

This means that as Chief People Office for Cafcass, one of your first responsibilities will be to advise me and the corporate management team about the ways in which we can do even more to excel at creating the very best work environment for everyone such that they can direct energy, passion and commitment to children. Cafcass supports something in the order of 143000 children every year in family proceedings and so our intentions and ambitious and stretching.

I see every encounter we offer, whether by telephone, in person, on email, in correspondence, in interview or in a social work assessment,  as the chance to show kindness, care, clarity and respect for children, their families and carers in private and public law proceedings. Everyone at Cafcass holds that responsibility regardless of their role, experience, profession or seniority. Our investment in our people has to enhance and prioritise those responsibilities we have and this means that you will understand, enable and help implement strong leadership, consistency with our management and practice quality standards, a grip on the standards expected of social workers by Social Work England and an ability to create a balance between what we must expect of people in order to discharge our statutory responsibilities to children whilst recognising the unique and independent advisory role that our social workers have with the family court. For our corporate functions and the people in associated roles, you will be helping us to support and develop professionals working in legal services, finance, information assurance, complaints, performance and analytics, human resources and information technology.

Additionally, in this role, we are looking for someone who understands our ambitions for children, set out in our strategy (Cafcass Strategic Plan 2023-2026) and who is committed to  helping us to continue building a culture here where being ambitious and relentless about what children need is a natural  state of mind for everyone at Cafcass. We don’t presume to know what children want when they find themselves in family court proceedings. We ask them and encourage them to tell us how it has been for them, so that we can reflect, adjust and improve the experience while they are still with us and for every child that follows.

As Chief People Officer you are a critical part of the senior leadership team at Cafcass. You help us to build and maintain and replenish the largest cadre of children’s social workers in England. You will also support us to attract, retain and develop corporate and business service professionals who are skilled, compassionate and laser focused on achieving that exceptional experience for children despite the realities associated with delays in the national family justice system, the domestic abuse and harm that many children endure and the adversarial nature of proceedings to make arrangements for their futures.  

Our day to day work is hard, the challenges are complex and the level of work held by our colleagues at any one time is high and constantly demanding of attention and energy. Your proactive strategies to maintain staff resilience and wellbeing are critical as is the urgent and sensitive response when health and wellbeing are compromised.  We are prioritising health, safety and security in the year ahead and this will need to be something you support and lead.

We compete in a sector where demand for high quality children’s social workers will always exceed the number who are available. Unlike the wider sector however, the freedoms available to those employers in pay and reward are much broader than ours. Your innovative strategies on pay and reward will push the boundaries on what is permissible while staying tuned into and creative about the broadest range of benefits that will appeal to children’s social workers – initially to come to us and then to stay.

You will be joining an organisation that is ambitious for the children yet to come but also determined that the operation of all our services makes maximum use of skills and resources, drives innovation and purposeful change within and alongside the wider family justice system. Your skills and experience on delivering large scale change – practically and culturally will help us achieve this with extraordinary skill, competence and compassion. In equal measure, your skills and experience in respect of helping a national organisation to sustain high performance and an established commitment to improvement will need to be demonstrated.

I am thankful to you for your interest and hope that you will take the next step to apply.

I look forward to telling you more about us.

Thank you for your time.