• Location: Hybrid – Remote base with regular UK travel for training delivery/direct support
• Contract: Full-time to Reporting to: Head of Practice & Professional Services
• Role level: Senior Officer
• Salary: £50,000-£60,000 (dependent on experience)

What We Are Looking For

We are looking for an experienced, proactive and trustworthy senior practitioner with extensive experience in Children’s Social Care, home-finding and/or commissioning. The successful candidate will be passionate about improving Children’s Services and the lives of children and young people who require care and support. They will be comfortable facilitating workshops, delivering training sessions and identifying opportunities to improve our offer. This is a highly autonomous role, so the ability to self-start is essential.

About IESE

iESE is a Community Interest Company dedicated to driving innovation in health and social care. Our mission is to deliver solutions that advance and improve the social care landscape, making a meaningful difference to those receiving, delivering and commissioning care.

Our flagship tool CareCubed is currently being used in over 35% of all UK Local Authorities Children’s Services and provides a structured, child-centred approach to understanding and negotiating care, quality and cost when home finding or sourcing specialist care for children and young people. We have a wide range of direct support on offer to improve best practice across the sector, including delivery of a suite of training and continued development of a wide range of resources. Local Authorities, health
organisations and care providers come to us to support transparency, collaborative relationships and robust, evidence-based decision-making.

As our influence grows, we are looking for a Senior Implementation & Improvement Officer for Children’s Services to help us to continue to grow, embed and deliver this important work.

We operate as a high-trust, high-performance organisation, combining sector expertise with best practice and digital innovation. As we continue to grow, we are focused on enhancing our impact, strengthening governance and building scalable systems that have a lasting positive impact on the sector.

The Role

We are looking for a motivated senior practitioner with extensive experience of children’s social care, home-finding and or commissioning to join the CareCubed team. This is a highly autonomous role and the ability to self-start is a must.

The Senior Implementation & Improvement Officer will support the delivery of iESE’s Children’s Social Care practice and improvement portfolio across Local Authorities and those delivering care nationally.

Reporting to the Head of Practice and Professional Services, the postholder is a senior practitioner and first-line manager that will work alongside children’s services to understand local practice, identify opportunities for improvement and support the design, implementation and embedding of sustainable changes across home finding and commissioning.

The role will lead assigned improvement programmes and CareCubed implementations, deliver training and practice-development activity, undertake process reviews and use learning from delivery to support the continued development of the CareCubed Children’s offer.

This is a varied and hands-on role that includes leading projects and complex workstreams, stakeholder engagement, training delivery, resource development and the confident delivery of best practice guidance and information to children’s social care leadership teams. Success will be measured by ensuring that those we support move successfully from discovery and mobilisation, through training, adoption, benefits realisation and transition to business-as-usual support.

The postholder may, in the future, be required to provide day-to-day line-management support to additional Implementation & Improvement Officer’s we recruit. This would involve day-to-day leadership, supervision, workload coordination, coaching and quality assurance.

The role sits deliberately between Officer and Head of Practice and Professional Services. It carries delegated responsibility for people leadership, implementation quality and routine operational decision-making, while the Head of Practice and Professional Services retains strategic leadership of the national children’s portfolio, including overall practice direction, programme priorities, senior stakeholder relationships, resource planning and significant escalations. It is expected that the Senior Implementation & Improvement Officer will support the Head of Practice and Professional Services to achieve this.

Our Approach to Children’s Social Care Improvement

We recognise that home-finding and commissioning take place within an increasingly complex environment – sufficiency challenges, rising complexity of need, workforce pressures, provider-sector instability and financial pressures. Our role is not to simply introduce a system or process; it is to work alongside Local Authorities and those delivering care to strengthen the practice around it to ensure success. This often involves improving the quality and consistency of home-finding and commissioning practice, such as supporting teams in strengthening communication and information flow, reducing
inconsistency, making better use of evidence and supporting constructive, balanced and transparent relationships with those delivering care.

The successful candidate must therefore understand how Local Authority Children’s Services operate and be able to work credibly with colleagues across home-finding, commissioning, brokerage, social work, finance, procurement and quality-assurance, as well as building significant rapport with senior leadership teams. They will recognise that systems and processes must support professional judgement and statutory responsibilities, not replace them, and understand the varied needs of the children and young people services are designed to support.

The postholder must have a robust knowledge of the children’s social care and home-finding landscape and be able to navigate a sector in which sufficiency, quality, and cost can be under significant pressure. They will understand the importance of securing the right provision for each child or young person, being needs-led and outcomes focused in approach, all whilst managing public resources responsibly. Safeguarding, assessed need, suitability, stability, relationships, identity, education, health and long-term outcomes must remain central to every implementation and improvement conversation.

Key Responsibilities

1. Children’s Social Care Implementation & Project Delivery

• Lead assigned CSC improvement programmes and CareCubed implementations from
  discovery and mobilisation through delivery, training, embedding, review and transition to business as usual.
• Work with customers to understand existing practice, processes and operating models ensuring improvement activity responds to local context rather than a one-fits-all approach.
• Ensure implementations are practical, proportionate and sustainable, reflecting each customer’s operating model while promoting consistent good practice and maximum value from CareCubed.
• Co-ordinate internal and customer resource, maintain accurate delivery records and provide concise, evidence-based progress reporting to the Head of Practice and Professional services.
• Identify strengths, barriers duplication, delay, inconsistency and opportunities for improvement across the portfolio.
• Support services to translate improvement ambition into practical changes that can be
  embedded within day-to-day delivery and practice.
• Identify and resolve routine delivery risks and issues, escalating scope, governance,
  reputational resource or relationship risk without delay.
• Contribute to capacity planning and the continuous refinement of implementation methods, templates, resources and quality standards.

2. Children’s Services Expertise and Improvement

• Act as a credible children’s services subject-matter expert particularly in relation to social care, commissioning, home-finding, provider engagement, reviews, cost analysis and best value.
• Work effectively across Children in Care, Fostering, Residential Care, Supported Accommodation, Leaving Care, SEND and Escalated Need whilst acknowledging local variation where relevant to the scope of the programme.
• Map current workflows and decision points, identify duplication, delay, risk and inconsistent practice, and facilitate the design of improved processes that remain child-centred and operationally workable.
• Support customer colleagues to use structured information when considering needs, outcomes, quality, suitability, provider proposals and cost, while respecting professional judgement, local governance and delegated decision-making.
• Ensure that implementation activity never treats price as the sole measure of value, having a whole system and outcomes focused lens that does not compromise quality, safeguarding, assessed need, lawful practice, or the voice and interests of the child or young person.
• Remain informed about relevant policy, regulation, inspection expectations, sector reform and emerging practice, translating changes into appropriate updates to improvement activity, delivery, training and resources.

3. Training, Facilitation and Practice Development

• Design, tailor and deliver high-quality CareCubed system, home- finding and commissioning best practice, negotiation and referral writing. Delivery should be confident, both remotely and onsite, with a strong ability to engage participants and respond to cohort level and need.
• Deliver implementation workshops, case-review sessions, coaching and train-the-trainer activity, both remotely and onsite.
• Use realistic children’s services scenarios and language so that learning is relevant and
  responsive to social care, commissioning, brokerage, finance, quality and leadership audiences.
• Facilitate workshops and improvement conversations across professional groups, creating space for constructive challenge and shared problem-solving.
• Assess readiness, competence, confidence and adoption; identify barriers to embedding change/improvement; and put targeted support in place as required.
• Observe and quality-assure training delivered by colleagues, providing constructive feedback and ensuring materials remain accurate, accessible and current.
• Promote knowledge transfer so that customer teams can sustain the approach after formal implementation support ends.
• Observe and quality-assure training delivered by colleagues, providing constructive feedback and ensuring materials remain accurate, accessible and current.
• Promote knowledge transfer so that customer teams can sustain the approach after formal implementation support ends.

4. Stakeholder Relationships, Insight, Evidence and Impact

• Build trusted relationships with operational practitioners, commissioners, managers and senior stakeholders, adapting communication to different levels of knowledge, authority, confidence and professional perspective.
• Listen actively, challenge constructively and manage expectations transparently, ensuring that decisions, actions, risks and commitments are recorded and followed through.
• Work with customers to understand whether improvement activity is translating into meaningful changes in practice, confidence, consistency and effective use of resources.
• Ensure relevant learning, evidence and insight is routinely reported on and shared with the Head of Practice and Professional Services and relevant CareCubed teams.
• Position oneself as a thought leader for the sector, identifying opportunities to share learning with a broad range of stakeholders across the sector.
• Act as an effective interface between those we support and internal colleagues, converting operational problems and client needs into clear, evidence-based requirements and improvement recommendations.

5. Internal Improvement and Organisational Development

• Contribute to CareCubed tool user testing, pilots, release readiness and evaluate the impact of updates/changes, with particular attention to children’s services workflows, impact and screening for unintended consequences.
• Use insight from direct work and feedback, adoption data, training completion, delivery performance, NPS, CSAT and other agreed measures to identify themes, risks and opportunities and strengthen the wider children’s offer.
• Share learning across the team and contribute children’s services expertise to research, thought leadership, case studies and service-development activity.
• Support discovery of new opportunities, demonstrations, scoping and tender activity when requested, providing accurate children’s services and implementation expertise.
• Recognise opportunities to deliver additional value or services and refer through the appropriate commercial route, without making commitments outside delegated authority.
• Work collaboratively with Implementation, Customer Success, Business Support, Product, Development, Sales and Marketing colleagues to provide a coherent customer experience.
• Represent iESE professionally at customer meetings, sector events and workshops, protecting confidential information and the organisation’s reputation.
• Undertake other reasonable duties consistent with the purpose and seniority of the role.

6. People Leadership and Professional Development (expected future requirement)

• Future potential to line-manage up to two Implementation & Improvement Officer’s as the organisation grows, establishing clear objectives, responsibilities, service standards and development priorities aligned with the children’s portfolio and wider organisational plan.
• Hold regular one-to-ones, supervision and performance conversations; provide timely feedback and coaching; support wellbeing, engagement and professional development; and complete formal reviews in line with organisational policy.
• Quality-assure implementation plans, training, workshops, customer communications, case-review activity, records and reporting, intervening early when standards or timescales are at risk.
• Support induction and continuing professional development, share sector knowledge, model effective practice and create opportunities for the Officer to build confidence and capability.
• Address routine performance, conduct or attendance concerns fairly and promptly within delegated authority, maintaining accurate records and involving the Head of Practice and Professional Services where formal action due to significant risk may be required.

Core Competencies and Behaviours

What IESE Offers

Remuneration & Benefits

• Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS)
• Competitive salary
• Performance-related bonuses
• Years of impact scheme

Wellbeing & Lifestyle

• 30 days annual leave, plus bank holidays
• Medical cover
• Cycle to work scheme
• EV salary sacrifice scheme

Ways of Working

• Flexible, remote-first working environment
• Opportunities for in-person collaboration and travel
• High-trust culture with autonomy and flexibility

Our Hiring Process

Why Join Us

This is an opportunity to join a mission-led organisation making a real difference across the public sector – shaping the future of childrens services. We are a successful and growing SaaS business with big aspirations. You will play a key role in shaping how IESE operates as we scale, helping to build a high-performing, impactful organisation that improves outcomes for communities across the UK.