Assistant Director - Family Help

Assistant Director for Family Help

Location
:
Oldham

Directorate
:
Children's Services

Salary
: £85,956 - £96,006

Contract
:
Permanent

Closing date: 12 noon, Friday 11th September 2026

Interview date: Friday 18th September 2026

Oldham is determined in its mission to achieve the best possible outcomes for its children, young people and families. We are redesigning how we support residents by building a Family Help system that provides timely, purposeful and proportionate support, delivered through an integrated model across all five districts of the Oldham borough.

Building on the successful establishment of our Best Start Family Hubs, we're committed to ensuring every child in Oldham has the best start in life and the opportunity to thrive. And with the national rollout of the Families First Partnership Programme representing the biggest transformation of children's social care in a generation, this is a unique and exciting time to join us and help shape the future of family support services.

We are seeking an exceptional Assistant Director for Family Help to lead, shape and strengthen our Family Help services across Oldham. This is a pivotal senior leadership role with the crucial responsibilities of ensuring that children, young people and families receive the right help at the right time, and that our workforce is supported to deliver excellent, child-centred and family-focused practice.

Oldham Council is committed to building a fairer, more inclusive borough that works for everyone, with a focus on improving public services, reducing inequalities and tackling poverty. The Council's wider priorities include fostering healthier and happier lives, ensuring Oldham is a great place to live, and encouraging green and growing communities. Central to delivering this vision are key pillars of work including prevention and early help, meaning this role plays an essential part in helping the borough as a whole.

As Assistant Director for Family Help, you will provide strategic and operational leadership across Family Help services, ensuring that support for families is accessible, coordinated, inclusive and effective. You will spearhead a complex system that brings together social work, family support, early help, safeguarding partners, schools, health services, police, voluntary and community organisations, and wider council services to improve outcomes for children and families.

You will be responsible for driving high-quality practice, strengthening thresholds and pathways, improving the experiences of children and families, and ensuring that statutory duties are delivered safely and consistently. You will also play a key role in the wider Children's Services leadership team, contributing to transformation, improvement, inspection readiness and partnership development.

This is an opportunity to lead with ambition, compassion and professional authority, creating the conditions for practitioners and managers to do their best work with families.

• Provide strategic leadership for Family Help services across Oldham, ensuring clear vision, direction, accountability and impact.
• Strengthen the Family Help operating model, ensuring families receive timely, coordinated and proportionate support.
• Lead high-quality social work and family help practice, with a focus on child-centred assessment, risk analysis, planning, review and outcomes.
• Work collaboratively with safeguarding partners, schools, health services, police, adult services, housing, voluntary sector partners and community organisations.
• Champion relationship-based, systemic, trauma-informed, strengths-based, anti-racist and anti-oppressive practice.
• Use performance data, auditing, feedback, inspection learning and quality assurance to drive continuous improvement.
• Provide visible, inclusive and supportive leadership to managers and practitioners.
• Build strong relationships with elected members, senior leaders, partners and communities.
• Contribute to Oldham's wider ambitions for prevention, family help, inclusion and improved outcomes for children, young people and families.

We are…