Practice Manager – Family Placement Services

Lead. Inspire. Change Lives.

At Barnardo's, we believe every child deserves the opportunity to thrive in a safe, loving and supportive environment. We are looking for an experienced and passionate Practice Manager to join our Family Placement Service and play a pivotal role in improving outcomes for children, young people, foster carers, adopters and families.

This is an exciting opportunity for a motivated social work leader to manage a team of skilled practitioners, drive service excellence, and contribute to the growth and development of one of the UK's leading children's charities.

About the Role

As a Practice Manager, you will provide operational and practice leadership to a team of Social Workers delivering high-quality fostering and adoption services. Working closely with the Operations Manager, you will ensure outstanding outcomes for children and young people while maintaining compliance with all statutory, regulatory and organisational requirements.

You will influence service development, champion safeguarding, oversee quality assurance processes and build strong partnerships with local authorities, commissioners and other key stakeholders.

Key Responsibilities

Leadership & People Management

Lead, motivate and develop a team of Social Workers and support staff.
Provide high-quality supervision, guidance and professional development opportunities.
Manage the employee lifecycle in line with Barnardo's people policies and procedures.
Foster a positive, inclusive and high-performing team culture.
Act as a role model, promoting Barnardo's values and commitment to excellence.

Quality of Practice

Ensure high standards of social work practice across the service.
Monitor casework, recording and decision-making to ensure compliance with Barnardo's standards.
Conduct quality assurance activities and support continual service improvement.
Maintain up-to-date knowledge of fostering, adoption and safeguarding legislation and implement changes where required.
Support and oversee foster carer Form F assessments and adopter AAR assessments.

Safeguarding & Risk Management

Lead safeguarding practice across the service, ensuring children remain at the centre of all decision-making.
Manage complaints and representations professionally and in accordance with policy and legislation.
Work collaboratively with external agencies to ensure effective safeguarding responses.
Promote a culture of safe, effective and compliant service delivery.

Service Development & Partnerships

Work with the Operations Manager to develop and implement strategic growth plans.
Build and maintain effective relationships with Local Authorities, commissioners and partner agencies.
Represent Barnardo's at internal and external meetings, panels and forums.
Contribute to service planning, review and development activities.
Deputise for the Operations Manager when required.

Reporting & Service Management

Produce high-quality reports for fostering and adoption panels, courts and senior management teams.
Monitor service performance, quality indicators and outcomes.
Support budget planning and effective financial management.
Ensure statutory reviews for foster carers and adopters are planned and completed effectively.

Learning & Development

Design and deliver training for foster carers and adopters.
Promote continuous learning and professional development across the team.
Ensure staff, workers and volunteers complete all mandatory and regulatory training requirements.

About You

We are looking for an experienced and knowledgeable social work professional who:

Holds a recognised Social Work qualification and relevant registration with NISCC.
Has significant experience within fostering, adoption or family placement services.
Demonstrates proven leadership and people management experience.
Has strong knowledge of safeguarding, fostering and adoption legislation and regulatory frameworks.
Is confident in quality assurance, service development and stakeholder engagement.
Possesses excellent communication, report-writing and relationship-building skills.
Is passionate about achieving the very best outcomes for children and young people.

What We Offer

The opportunity to make a genuine difference to the lives of children, young people and families.
A supportive and values-led working environment.
Ongoing professional development and learning opportunities.
The chance to influence and shape high-quality family placement services.
A rewarding leadership role within one of the UK's most respected children's charities.

Apply Today and help shape brighter futures with Barnardo's

If you share our passion for creating brighter futures for children, we'd love to hear from you.

Working Hours: Monday to Friday (37 hours per week) with flexibility to undertake occasional recruitment and training events and visits during evenings and on Saturdays. Although this is a full-time role we may consider part time hours for the right candidate.

Location: Office base 230b Belmont Road, Belfast, Northern Ireland, BT4 2AW. Travel is required across Northern Ireland.

This is a hybrid working role – We place value on colleagues spending time together at our office base on a regular basis, with flexibility to work from home for part of the week.

Salary: £47,071.00 - £49,725.00

We will also hold a waiting list of suitable candidates to be considered in the event that other similar vacancies arise in the next 12 months.

The successful candidate will also be required to undertake Enhanced Access NI with Child Barred List check.

For informal enquires please contact Ben Rice via ben.rice@barnardos.org.uk

Please note due to the high volume of applications for some posts, this advert might close before the displayed closing date. We recommend that you apply for this role as soon as possible.

We know that our colleagues go above and beyond in delivering our vital work, driven by their passion and commitment to Barnardo's values.  We also know that we can only realise our ambitions and achieve better outcomes for more children, thanks to the talent, hard work and creativity of our people.

For all these reasons, we are committed to a new approach to pay and reward, to ensure it is fair, attractive and progressive, which was rolled out in April 2023. This is a positive change for the charity, and a part of our People & Culture Strategy. It will assist us in supporting colleagues to belong, thrive and grow in their colleague journey at Barnardo's and in time will offer clear routes of progression for colleagues in both their career and their pay.

Whilst the full pay band and salary range is advertised, our approach to starting salaries is to appoint between the minimum to mid-point of the pay band – this ensures that pay steps are available to reward our colleagues annually based on their contribution to excellence and alignment to our values and behaviours.  More details on Barnardo's pay framework can be found upon application.

Workplace Offer: What it means for you

Our hybrid working initiative is based on trust, flexibility and empowerment. We understand our workplace offer means different things to different people, and we encourage those conversations. This may mean working at one of our stores, services, working at home, in the community, at one of our Collaboration Hubs or depending on the role any combination of these. Please read through the advert carefully to understand the remits of hybrid working that will be specific to the role.

Barnardo's require colleagues to be UK residents, based in the UK and to complete their roles from within the UK (with the exception of colleagues providing Barnardo's services in Jersey and colleagues who live in the Republic of Ireland providing services in Northern Ireland)

Barnardo's believe in creating equality of opportunity in the workplace and supporting people to manage their work-life balance; we are therefore open to offering flexible working arrangements.
Annual Leave entitlement for full-time colleagues is 26 days per annum, increasing to 27 days per annum, after 3 years Barnardo's service, 29 days per annum, after 5 years Barnardo's service and 30 days per annum, after 7 years Barnardo's service. Those working less than full time are entitled to the same level of holiday pro rata
The ability to buy up to another 5 days annual leave via our Buy Your Leave scheme
A host of family friendly leave options including company Maternity Paternity and Adoption pay; together with all family additional leave options
Service related sick pay from day 1
Access to a Group Personal Pension with a matched 4% or 6% contribution from Barnardo's. Ability to pay via salary sacrifice to garner both tax and NI savings on your own contribution
Death in service cover of 4x annual earnings for all staff contributing to our Group Personal Pension
Cycle2work scheme
Interest free season ticket loans
Discounts and cashback from at high street shops including major supermarkets, cinemas, gyms, leisure/theme parks, holidays and much more via our Benefit Portal
20% discount at Barnardo's stores
Opportunity to purchase a health cash plan to claim towards dental, glasses, therapy etc
Free access to round the clock employee assistance program for advice and support
Access to Barnardo's Learning and Development offer

*T&C's apply based on contract

We are committed to being an inclusive employer and cultivating a culture where everyone can belong and thrive through inclusion and connectivity. We want our workforce to be reflective of the communities we work with, and for equality, diversity and inclusion to be embedded in everything we do. We are a Disability Confident Leader, are progressing our ambition to be an anti-racist organisation with Anti-Racism Commitments and actions in place and have networks for colleagues who are disabled, LGBT+, Black and Minoritised Ethnic and Women. We particularly encourage applications from Black and Minoritised Ethnic and/or disabled candidates who are currently underrepresented in our workforce. For disabled applicants, we offer reasonable adjustments throughout the recruitment process.

Reference number:23364
Job Title:Practice Manager
Location:230b Belmont Road, Belfast, BT4 2AW
Contract type:Permanent
Hours:37
Salary:47,071.00 - 49,725.00 plus Office at Home Allowance - £312.00 per annum
Closing Date:26 July 2026
Interview Date:04.08.26

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Practice Manager