TESS Team Manager

THERAPEUTIC & EMOTIONAL SUPPORT SERVICE (TESS)

We are seeking an experienced, compassionate, and creatively minded Therapeutic Social Work Team Manager to lead one of our specialist Therapeutic and Emotional Support Teams, working with children and young people in care (under 18) and their carers.

TESS is an emotional wellbeing service that offers assessment and a wide range of individual, dyadic and group interventions to Birmingham’s children in care, their parents and carers, unaccompanied asylum‑seeking children, and care experienced young adults up to the age of 25 years. TESS also provides consultation and support to the professional and care network.

This is an exciting opportunity to shape and lead a relationship‑based, trauma‑informed, and attachment‑focused team that responds to complex emotional wellbeing and promotes placement stability. The service is a multidisciplinary therapeutic team operating from a social care perspective, working closely with children and young people in residential and foster care settings to support emotional and safe connections, build trust within the primary care relationship, and offer direct therapeutic support to children and young people.

• Provide clinical and operational leadership to a multidisciplinary therapeutic team
• Work collaboratively with the wider TESS service and Birmingham Children’s Trust
• Ensure the delivery of high‑quality, trauma‑informed and attachment‑focused interventions
• Promote creative and flexible therapeutic approaches, including play‑based, relational, and non‑traditional methods of engagement
• Support and supervise practitioners to deliver relationship‑based therapeutic work with children, young people, and carers
• Lead a collaborative, multi‑agency approach to service delivery, placement stability and improving emotional wellbeing
• Oversee therapeutic planning, risk screening and safety planning, and outcome monitoring for complex presentation
• Develop and deliver training and consultation to carers and professionals
• Embed reflective practice and staff wellbeing within the team culture

• Experience working therapeutically with children and young people who have experienced trauma, loss, and attachment disruption
• Confidence leading and managing a multidisciplinary team grounded in trauma‑informed, attachment‑focused, and relational approaches
• Passionate about ethical, child‑centred and anti‑oppressive practice
• Comfortable navigating complex systems and multi‑agency work
• Strong knowledge of safeguarding, risk management, and multi‑agency working
• Evidence‑based practice and research orientation

This is a great opportunity to join a developing service to shape and grow a specialist therapeutic team with space for creativity, innovation, and reflective leadership. This is a chance to make a real, lasting difference to the lives of children in care.

We will provide you with access to training, regular professional supervision, and on‑going support.

If you have experience of working with care‑experienced children and young people, are positive, passionate and committed to making a difference and enjoy the challenge this brings, we would like to hear from you. We are looking for applicants who can demonstrate an interest in evidence‑based practice and research and who are keen to develop their knowledge.

If you share our commitment and passion in making a lasting difference for our young adults and have experience of managing or leading therapeutic services or teams (or aspiring to develop in this area) and have a strong knowledge of safeguarding, risk management, and multi‑agency working, we would like to hear from you.

In order to be considered for this role please include a supporting statement demonstrating how you meet the competencies required as outlined in the attached person specification.

For more information please contact Lee Vince, TESS Head of Service on Lee.

Vince

We have been rated as ‘Good’ by Ofsted, following a 2023 inspection. This is a fantastic achievement for Birmingham Children’s Trust, with many positive highlights focusing on areas including the quality of staff leadership, partnership…