Job title: Service Manager Early Learning and Childcare   

Attributes

Experience

Essential:

  • Experience of managing and delivering scrutiny and assurance activity.
  • Experience of managing scrutiny and assurance teams operationally.
  • Direct experience of supporting improvement and building capacity through self-evaluation. 
  • Highly skilled and experienced in the ‘art of inspection’.
  • Experience of planning scrutiny and assurance programmes, including those delivered in partnership with others.
  • Significant experience in social work/social care in children’s services.
  • Experience of stakeholder engagement at both a strategic and operational level, particularly during the inspection process, delivering feedback and dealing with challenges to the inspection processes and findings.
  • Experience in quality assurance, self-evaluation, performance management and the recruitment, training, development and support of staff.
  • Significant experience operational scrutiny activity and professional regulatory practice within the health and social care, or other relevant sectors.
  • Demonstrable evidence of embedding sustainable transformational change.

Desirable:

  • Direct experience of developing and applying quality frameworks to support self-evaluation, scrutiny and improvement.

Education, qualifications and training

Essential:

  • Educated to degree level or equivalent.
  • Appropriate professional qualification.
  • Commitment to own CPD.
  • A qualification in quality management/ scrutiny and improvement such as EFQM and PSIF.

Skills and knowledge

Essential:

  • The ability to provide leadership and direction to a diverse, multi-disciplinary team of professional staff.
  • Demonstrate significant knowledge and direct first hand experience of inspection/regulation of care in a children’s setting.
  • Demonstrate significant skills and knowledge of quality assuring inspection processes and reports.
  • Demonstrate commitment to the principles of the Public Service Reform (Scotland) Act 2010 and the principles of better regulation.
  • Be adept at challenging traditional thinking in a positive and constructive way.
  • Excellent communicator, both verbally and in written form.
  • Politically astute.
  • Ability to translate plans into action.
  • Excellent negotiation and influencing skills.
  • Demonstrate broad knowledge of working with inspection/regulation of care.
  • Knowledge of trends and changes within social work and social care with an understanding of Equality and Diversity issues.
  • IT literate, using the most effective methods to communicate and manage information.

Desirable:

  • Knowledge and understanding of health/social care practice, theory, policy and research.
  • Demonstrate understanding of corporate social responsibility, whereby social and environmental concerns are voluntarily integrated to business operations and stakeholder interaction.
  • Understanding of, and ability to demonstrate, the management of complex projects.

Key performance outcomes

Leading others

Essential:

  • Ability to provide credible and authentic professional leadership, with a clear sense of purpose and direction to effectively lead a key professional function within the Care Inspectorate.
  • Ability to effectively deploy staff and other resources to achieve performance objectives.
  • Ensure that staff working in inspection in respect of children’s services conduct themselves in accordance with the highest standards of integrity, probity and openness through the implementation of robust corporate governance.
  • Demonstrate ability to provide leadership and strategic management direction for multi disciplinary, professional teams and bring together groups from different disciplines/bodies.

Management of resources

Essential:

  • Ability to bring together the overall work of a multi-disciplinary team of staff.
  • Ability to manage resources in achievement of the Care Inspectorate’s objectives.
  • Ability to bring together the overall work of a team of staff, determining the “tone” for a significant area of the organisation’s work and promoting a corporate vision.
  • Ability to manage resources in achievement of the Care Inspectorate’s objectives.

Desirable:

  • Ability to drive continuous improvement and manage business planning and performance processes.

Effective communication

Essential:

  •  Articulate and positive communicator both in verbal and written communication skills.
  • Ability to engage, influence and lead the development of a wide range of key stakeholder relationships, both internally and externally.

Desirable:

  • The ability to build and guide key stakeholder strategies and manage relationships to secure or improve delivery of key programme or service outputs.

Impact and influence

Essential:

  • Evidence of building positive relationships, engaging and collaborating effectively with others internally and externally.
  • Demonstrate personal resilience, being able to work flexibly under to deliver tangible results.
  • Demonstrates ability to influence at all levels.
  • Ability to promote, lead and implement strategies and change programmes to improve the development and quality of services.
  • Evidence of building positive relationships, engaging and collaborating effectively with others internally and externally.
  • Demonstrates personal resilience, being able to work flexibly under pressure with stamina and tenacity to deliver results.

Desirable:

  • A proven track record of promoting, leading and implementing strategies and change programmes to improve the development and quality of services
  • Ability to take account of wider political and organisational sensitivities to deliver strategic objectives.

Objective decision making

Essential:

  • The ability to assist the Chief Inspector Early Learning and Childcare  Services   to set, in consultation with others, the overall agenda, long term objectives and performance standards for the Directorate.
  • Demonstrate analytical and systematic approach to problem solving.
  • Ability to make appropriate and realistic judgments, based on relevant, up to date and verifiable information.
  • The ability to take responsibility for difficult decisions and to remain resilient against possible criticism.

Please note – these are key performance outcomes to be used to recruit into the role.  Successful applicants will be assessed against all the performance indicators used in the Performance Development Review System once established in the role.