Early Strategic Manager

About Us At Hounslow

We’d love you to join us at the London Borough of Hounslow! Our people are deeply committed to providing excellent services to our residents, doing all we can to make lives as good as they can be.

We are an outstanding council, serving an outstanding borough.

With brilliant, visionary leadership, a dynamic Cabinet and a can‑do culture, we’ve built strong partnerships which have transformed how we serve one of London’s most diverse boroughs. Hounslow is the world in one place and full of potential. We are stepping up for our residents like never before.

We live by five core values:
Lead with Heart, Do New, Pass on the Power, Harness the Mix and Be a Rock. All our work has equality, diversity and inclusion at its very heart, best articulated in “Harness the Mix”. It’s about breaking down barriers between our parts and people and unlocking the problem‑solving power of our amazing mix of minds. We serve a diverse community, we have a diverse workforce and we are committed to being an inclusive employer.

We work hard to create representation across our workforce and leadership community, we have thriving employee network groups and our learning and development programmes help us lead, model and breathe ways of working that eliminate inequality, inequity, injustice and bias.

As part of this and under our commitments as a Disability Confident Employer, we make reasonable adjustments to accommodate our candidates. There’s space for you to tell us what you need within our application form.

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This is an exciting opportunity to be part of our Family Help & Protection Service as the Early Help Strategic Manager. In this role, you will be primarily working on driving our vision for early help across the borough and taking a lead on overseeing the delivery of our Families First Partnership Programme delivery plan.

• Strategic leadership and partnership: leading the development and implementation of the Early Help Strategy, fostering partnership approaches and co‑production, while ensuring project delivery meets scope and timelines.
• Data‑driven quality assurance: collecting and analysing data, updating recording systems, and developing a quality assurance framework to support evidence‑based improvements.
• Operational management and compliance: preparing reports, administering partnership meetings, maintaining project documentation, prioritising workloads, and ensuring policies comply with legislation and standards.
• Leadership and values: overseeing up to four staff members, embodying values such as compassion, innovation, empowerment, collaboration, and resilience, and holding essential qualifications including social work registration and enhanced DBS clearance.

The Early Help Strategic Manager role is pivotal in delivering our early help strategy and implementation of national FFPP reforms.

This position requires collaboration with various stakeholders to ensure effective early help services align with council priorities. You will work closely with colleagues across Children’s Services, as well as with other Council Departments and external partners.

• Excellent relationship building skills – especially with partner agencies and the ability to influence effectively.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills – able to prepare high‑quality reports, present to partners, and communicate confidently across services.
• Passion for improving outcomes for children and young people.
• Excellent organisational skills – needed for planning workload, managing deadlines, project oversight, and coordinating partnership activity.
• Resilience – the role requires determination, adaptability, and the ability to sustain impact in a fast‑paced transformation environment.
• Ability to lead strategic change and partnership engagement – including driving the Early Help Strategy, co‑production, and leading system‑wide transformation.

Read more about the work you’ll be doing in the Role Profile.

Enhanced DBS

The key information you need about the role should be in the role profile, but if you have any further questions about the role, please contact Jennifer Hopper – Assistant Director for Family Help & Protection.

Interviews for this job will be held during week commencing 3rd March 2026. (please seek your line manager approval before applying for this role as secondment.)

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