Children's Residential Team Leader (Senior Practitioner)

Children's Residential Team Leader (Senior Practitioner)

Details

• Reference : SCC / TP / 288898 / 3950
• Positions : 1
• Salary : £36,873 - £39,820 per annum plus enhanced pay for sleep ins, bank holidays and any weekend working
• Category : Care - Children and Young People
• Contract type : Permanent
• Working hours : 36
• Posted on : 29 September 2025
• Location : Walton-on-Thames, Surrey

The starting salary for this role is £36,873 per annum for working 36 hours per week plus enhanced rates of pay for weekends, bank holidays and sleep in duties.

Are you ready to take the next step in your career in residential children's care?

We currently have an opportunity for a Senior Practitioner to join our Children's Residential Home inWalton-on-Thames. If you are considering a move from the private children's residential care sector, or another care background this role may more commonly be known as a Residential Team or Shift Leader.

This is one of the best roles in our homes — offering a balance between direct work with our children and young people and the opportunity to contribute to the development of your team.

Our Offer to You

Our Senior Practitioner role is one that is both structured and varied, where you'll have a foot in two camps :

Directly supporting our children and young people , building trusted relationships, and helping them manage their emotions and behaviours, process trauma, and navigate complex family dynamics. You'll bring empathy, consistency, and resilience to your work — creating positive experiences filled with laughter, fun, and love, while helping our children and young people to develop healthy routines and coping strategies through meaningful activities including education and contributing to everyday life within the home.

Supporting and guiding staff ,you will use your previous experience and sense of personal authority, professionalism, and integrity to lead by example, helping team members to make safe, and informed decisions in sometimes challenging circumstances. You will work closely with management within the home to maintain a safe, nurturing environment and collaborate with multi-agency professionals involved in the lives of tour children and young people to contribute to meaningful care planning. You will guide junior members of the team acting as a mentor and sharing best practice, role modelling behaviours, creating respectful and confidential boundaries to work within, and inspiring them to grow by supporting them with their induction, training requirements, probation activity, and journey to gain their diplomas.

This is a fantastic opportunity for someone ready to take their first step into leadership, without the full stretch and responsibility of a Deputy Manager role. We'll support you to develop your own skills through training, regular supervision, and a personalised development plan, and the opportunity to gain your Level 5 qualification in Management and Leadership if that's the path you choose, paving the way for future progression into more senior roles.

Shortlisting Criteria

To be considered for shortlisting for this position your CV and answers to the questions below will clearly evidence :

In this role, you'll be expected to provide supervision to more junior team members. While previous supervisory experience isn't essential, you must be confident in offering guidance and support, and willing to take on this responsibility as part of your development.

If you have transferable skills and experience of working in children's services such as family support or placements, fostering, youth services or probation and prison services you may have developed skills that would align well to our Senior Practitioner role, and we would love to hear from you to understand how these could fit a role in our residential children's services.

As part of your application, you will be asked to submit a CV and answer the following questions :

Working in our homes represents a unique opportunity to support our children and young people with their everyday lives. To do this safely you will be asked to tell us about any allergies you have that may need to be reasonably managed to ensure your safety and wellbeing with minimal impact to the children and young people we care for.

Our Requirements

Due to our legal obligations, we can only accept applications from people 22 years old and above.

Surrey has both urban and rural areas and our residential workforce will be expected to have a valid driving licence to drive in the UK and access to a vehicle, to support our young people to attend appointments, activities or trips as agreed. Reasonable adjustments where needed will be made for successful applicants who have a disability or long-term health condition to enable them to fulfil the requirements of the job.

Contact Us

Please contact us for any questions relating to the role. This could be to discuss flexible working requests, transferable skills, or any barriers to employment. For an informal discussion please contact Sarah Muzzall by e-mail at residentialrecruitment@surreycc.gov.uk .

This advert closes at 23 : 59 on the 26th of October with interviews to follow.

We look forward to receiving your application, please click on the apply online button below to submit.

An enhanced DBS 'Disclosure and Barring Service' check for regulated activity (formerly known as CRB) and the Children's and Adults' Barred List checks will be required for this role.

We are committed to the safe recruitment of staff in our Residential homes across Surrey therefore if you are successful in being offered a role within our service, we will work with you to collect all required checks in line with government guidance. You can find out more about what information you will be asked to provideHERE .

Local Government Reorganisation (LGR)

Surrey County Council is undergoing Local Government Reorganisation, moving from a two-tier system to new unitary councils in April 2027. Your role will transfer with current terms and conditions to one of these new councils, supporting local devolution and greater powers for our communities.

We are a disability confident employer which means if you have shared a disability on your application form and have evidenced you meet the minimum criteria, we guarantee you an interview.

Your skills and experience truly matter to us. From application to your first day, we're committed to supporting you with any adjustments you need, we value inclusion and warmly welcome you to join and help build a workplace where everyone belongs.

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