Head of Fitness to Practise - Investigations

Salary or salary range: £58,625 per year, rising to £60,838 per year

Contract type: Full-time

Location of position: Sheffield/hybrid

Application deadline: 12/07/2024

The Role

Social Work England are the specialist regulator for social work in England, focused on enabling positive change in social work. Every day, social workers support millions of people to improve their chances in life. We are taking a new approach to regulating social workers in their vital roles. We believe in the power of collaboration and share a common goal with those we regulate – to protect the public, enable positive change and ultimately improve people’s lives.

The fitness to practise investigations team sits within the regulatory directorate and undertakes investigations into the fitness to practise of social workers on our register, in line with our legal framework.

The regulation directorate is critical to the statutory functions of the organisation and the impact Social Work England needs to have on the quality of professional practice in social work. Working with the assistant director, regulation (investigations), you will lead on aspects of Social Work England’s core fitness to practise operational functions.

Purpose of the role

The head of fitness to practise – investigations will lead Social Work England’s triage and investigations functions, ensuring our investigations service operates in a responsive, timely and proportionate manner and delivers valuable insight to the wider sector, alongside ensuring that the service delivers all aspects of its statutory responsibilities.

You will be responsible for delivery for the triage and investigation’s areas of the business plan. You will also work together in collaboration with colleagues (internally and externally), ensuring the effective delivery of the service is aligned to the business plan and our overarching strategy.

You will contribute to our focus on delivering our ambitions as a regulator, and in delivering for people, and on our commitments to equality, diversity and inclusion.

What you will do

- Lead and maintain a high-quality triage and investigation service that consistently achieves key performance measures and delivers outcomes in accordance with the business plan.

- Oversee and ensure the effective operation of the triage and investigations function (including the work of external legal provider(s)), working within Social Work England’s legislative and operational frameworks.

- Oversee the triage and investigations team, ensuring the recruitment and development of the team to ensure the delivery of their responsibilities.

- Be responsible and accountable for robust, accurate, clear and consistent decision making in relation to triage and investigations activities.

- Develop and continuously review the operation of the triage and investigations function, including working with appropriate challenging targets and key performance indicators, and taking into account feedback about, and quality assurance of, the work of the team.

- Work with teams across Social Work England to ensure changes, improvements and issues relating to the investigation of social workers in England are identified, analysed, and acted upon.

- Establish and maintain accurate performance reporting and forecasting models for workflow and assist with setting the annual budget for the triage and investigation teams.

- Contribute to the development and implementation of our corporate strategy, business planning, and continuing programme of organisational improvement.

- Prepare high level reporting, documents, and committee papers and present to stakeholders as required.

- Be accountable to the assistant director in relation to team, directorate and corporate risk. Understand regulatory risk and the strategies that can be developed to reduce risk and prevent harm.

- Identify and implement changes that enhance flexibility, responsiveness, and quality of service.

- Model our values and behaviours, inspiring and motivating our people to achieve our strategic objectives and to achieve our ambitions as a regulator. Work closely with our colleagues to ensure cohesive, collaborative, and effective delivery of our operational activities and strategic aims.

- Build robust relationships with senior stakeholders, including the Professional Standards Authority (PSA) and professional organisations to continuously improve the service in accordance with developments in the regulatory and professional sector, with the main aim of ensuring a high level of public protection. Drive learning and actions from equality, diversity and inclusion initiatives and ensure that our investigation tools are applied fairly and without prejudice to social workers from all backgrounds.

- Ensure that learning from quality assurance activity and through Professional Standards Authority (PSA) audits and learning points are actioned, embedded within improvement projects and operational processes/guidance and deliver demonstrable improvements.

- Lead on responses for areas of responsibility in relation to the PSA performance review process.

Skills, knowledge and experience

- Demonstrable experience of successful leadership in a high-volume, complex investigations or regulatory environment

- A proven role model for respectful, open and honest behaviour including a demonstrable commitment to equality and diversity in service delivery.

- Experience of leading and effective delegation across multiple teams responsible for high volume case investigation work, where accuracy, timeliness, customer service and compliance with standards is paramount.

- Demonstrable experience of designing, managing and improving operational procedures within a complex investigation or regulatory environment.

- Influencing and negotiating skills, able to compromise to reach mutually beneficial shared outcomes.

- Experience of setting, monitoring and delivering service performance against challenging targets, and in particular a track record of creating and using performance management information to consistently raise performance and productivity of teams.

- Ability to make sound, reasoned judgements based on standards, risk and applicable legal frameworks and to advise others to make effective decisions.

- A proven record in risk management; the identification, escalation and mitigation of operational issues and risks.

- Credibility to represent us externally, inspiring public confidence in the organisation and developing and maintaining strong working relationships with key external stakeholders.

- Experience of reporting against operational and strategic performance level.

Details

Job type: Permanent.

Working pattern: Full-time. We offer flexible working subject to business need.

Salary: £58,625 per year, rising to £60,838 per year after successful completion of a 6-month probationary period.

Location: Sheffield/hybrid remote.

Benefits: flexible working, contributory pension, life insurance and benefits portal.

Interview date: Monday 22 or Tuesday 23 July

Application

During the application process, you'll be asked to provide answers to three questions from the job description. These answers will be what your application is scored on, please answer in as much detail as possible using examples where necessary.