Deputy Manager - Care and Support

Location: Pilning

Deputy Service Manager – Care & Support Adult Day Opportunities Learning Disabilities & Complex Needs Monday–Thursday, 8:30am–4:30pm;
Friday 8:30 - 3:30pm Are you an experienced Senior Support Worker, Team Leader, Care Coordinator or Deputy Manager looking for a role where you can genuinely influence the quality of people's support? We are looking for a Deputy Service Manager – Care & Support to join our specialist adult day service supporting people with complex learning and physical disabilities. This is a genuine operational leadership role.

Working directly alongside the Service Manager, you will help lead the day-to-day service, coordinate staff around people's individual needs and make sure high-quality, person-centred support is happening in practice — not just written in a care plan. What you'll be doing You will be the Service Manager's operational deputy, with responsibility for areas including: coordinating daily staffing and matching staff skills to individual support needs;

overseeing person-centred care and support plans and individual risk assessments; making sure changing needs are identified and acted on; supervising, coaching and supporting members of the care and support team; monitoring the quality of support and care recording; promoting safe, consistent practice; supporting safeguarding, incident management and service improvement; working with families, social workers, commissioners and health professionals; and taking responsibility for the day-to-day service within your delegated role and when the Service Manager is unavailable.

You'll be visible within the service and know the people we support. This isn't a job where good management means sitting behind a closed office door. Who we're looking for You don't necessarily need to have been called a Deputy Manager before. We'd particularly like to hear from experienced:
Senior Support Workers | Team Leaders | Care Coordinators | Support Coordinators | Deputy Managers who are ready for greater responsibility. You'll need good experience of adult social care or support services and a strong understanding of person-centred practice, safeguarding and risk management. Experience supporting adults with learning disabilities, physical disabilities or complex needs is important. You'll also need to be someone who can organise people, make sensible decisions, give clear direction and notice when something isn't right.

A Level 3 or higher Health and Social Care qualification would be an advantage, but relevant experience and the ability to do the job well matter to us too. Why this role may be different from other deputy-manager jobs Our service operates during the day, Monday to Friday , so the normal working pattern for this post is 9:00am–4:30pm , with an earlier finish on Fridays.

We offer a generous annual leave package of 25 days per year, increasing to 28 days after two years continuous service. You'll work in a specialist service where you can get to know the people attending, their families and the staff team properly, while still developing your experience of operational management, quality assurance, complex support and multidisciplinary working. You'll have meaningful responsibility, but you won't be expected to run the service unsupported: you'll work directly with an experienced Service Manager and within the wider leadership structure of the organisation.

For someone currently working at senior or team-leader level, it is an opportunity to make the move into service management. For an existing Deputy Manager, it offers a specialist leadership role without the usual residential shift pattern.

About us 15A Adult Social Education Centre is part of Area 51 Education, a specialist charity supporting young people and adults with significant learning, physical and support needs. Our focus is on providing safe, respectful and genuinely person-centred support which helps people communicate, participate, maintain their health and wellbeing, develop independence and enjoy meaningful opportunities. Interested? If you're an experienced care and support professional who likes being close enough to the service to know what's actually happening — while also being ready to lead people, improve practice and take real responsibility — we'd like to hear from you.

Area 51 Education is committed to safeguarding. Appointment is subject to appropriate safer-recruitment checks, including an enhanced DBS check and satisfactory references.