Deputy Manager – Residential Therapeutic Children’s Home
Role Details
Reports to: Registered Manager
Accountable to: Registered Manager, Responsible Individual and Registered Provider
Regulatory body: Ofsted
Hours: Full-time, with flexibility appropriate to a 24-hour residential service
Role Purpose
The Deputy Manager will work closely with the Registered Manager to provide safe, compassionate, consistent and therapeutically informed leadership within the home.
The postholder supports the day-to-day operation of the service, ensuring children receive high-quality care that promotes safety, emotional wellbeing, development and meaningful outcomes.
The Deputy Manager will model professional practice and help ensure the home’s values, therapeutic approach and safeguarding culture are evident in everyday care. They will support compliance with the Children’s Homes (England) Regulations 2015, the Quality Standards, the Statement of Purpose, safeguarding requirements and organisational policies.
Key Responsibilities
Therapeutic Leadership and Practice
* Support the embedding of the home’s therapeutic model throughout everyday residential care.
* Work with the Registered Manager and therapist or clinical professional to translate agreed recommendations and therapeutic objectives into practical strategies.
* Reinforce trauma-informed, attachment-aware and relationship-based practice through shift leadership, handovers, supervision, reflective discussions and review of records.
* Ensure therapeutic recommendations are implemented, monitored and evidenced, identifying gaps or inconsistencies in practice and recording.
Safeguarding Leadership
* Promote a culture in which safeguarding concerns are recognised, reported and acted upon promptly.
* Respond appropriately to disclosures, allegations, missing episodes, exploitation, unsafe relationships, online harm, bullying, self-harm, abuse and emerging risks.
* Escalate concerns through the appropriate safeguarding procedures, including to the Responsible Individual, Registered Provider or relevant external safeguarding route where necessary.
* Ensure children’s welfare takes precedence over the reputation, convenience or commercial interests of the home.
Leadership of the Staff Team
* Provide a calm, visible and consistent management presence, promoting professionalism, accountability and reflective practice.
* Provide direction during shifts and periods of delegated management responsibility and challenge unsafe, inappropriate or inconsistent practice.
* Contribute to induction, probation, supervision, appraisal, competency assessment, training, team meetings and performance management.
* Ensure staffing pressures or concerns about retention never prevent unsafe practice from being addressed.
Children’s Experiences, Voice and Progress
* Know the children living in the home and understand their individual needs, strengths, risks, wishes and plans.
* Support individualised care that promotes emotional and physical health, education, identity, positive relationships, interests, participation and independence.
* Understand the progress each child is making, the support provided by the staff team and the evidence demonstrating outcomes.
Care Planning, Risk Management and Admissions
* Support oversight of placement plans, risk assessments, behaviour support strategies, therapeutic recommendations and other care documentation.
* Ensure staff understand and follow plans, and that changes in risk, presentation or the effectiveness of strategies are communicated and reviewed promptly.
* Ensure key work is purposeful and connected to identified needs, wishes, risks and outcomes.
* Support the Registered Manager in considering referrals and proposed admissions, including compatibility, staffing competence, therapeutic needs, safeguarding, education, health requirements and the Statement of Purpose.
* Ensure concerns about the safety or appropriateness of a placement are clearly communicated. Occupancy or financial considerations must never override children’s welfare.
Financial Responsibility
* Support appropriate financial controls and undertake delegated responsibilities for expenditure, petty cash, household finances and authorised transactions.
* Ensure children’s allowances, personal monies and savings are accurately recorded, securely held, regularly reconciled and clearly identifiable as belonging to each child.
* Maintain receipts and audit trails, support children to develop financial awareness and report discrepancies, missing money or suspected financial abuse promptly.
Professional Conduct and Duty to Escalate
* Demonstrate high standards of integrity, emotional maturity and professional conduct.
* Maintain appropriate boundaries, protect confidential information, declare conflicts of interest and use organisational resources responsibly.
* Challenge unsafe, unlawful or misleading practice and use the appropriate escalation, whistleblowing or safeguarding route where necessary.
* Never knowingly follow an instruction that places a child at risk.
Person Specification
Essential Requirements
- Experience: Strong residential childcare experience, including senior or delegated leadership responsibilities.
- Safeguarding: Strong understanding of child protection, allegations, exploitation, missing children, professional boundaries and escalation.
- Therapeutic practice: Ability to embed trauma-informed, attachment-aware and relationship-based approaches and work with therapists or clinical professionals.
- Leadership: Ability to lead shifts, supervise or mentor staff, challenge practice and support performance improvement.
- Regulatory knowledge: Working knowledge of the Children’s Homes Regulations,
- Quality Standards, Statement of Purpose and Ofsted expectations.
- Quality assurance: Ability to review records and practice, identify concerns and support measurable service improvement.
- Communication: Clear written and verbal communication, professional challenge and effective multi-agency working.
- Qualifications: Relevant qualification for the role, or willingness and eligibility to complete required development within the applicable timeframe.
- Suitability: Meets safer recruitment and suitability requirements applicable to the role.
Assessment: Application, interview, references, qualification evidence and appropriate pre-employment checks.
Standards of Success
Success will be demonstrated through the safety, experiences and progress of children and the quality of staff practice. The Deputy Manager should contribute to a home where children feel safe and listened to, safeguarding concerns are acted upon, therapeutic recommendations are visible in everyday care, staff receive appropriate leadership and challenge, records accurately demonstrate practice and outcomes, risks are actively managed and weaknesses result in learning and measurable improvement