Are you passionate about making a positive difference in the lives of children and families?
Do you have the leadership skills and commitment to support carers and empower children and young people to achieve their full potential?
If so, Birmingham Children's Trust would love to hear from you!
A rare opportunity has emerged for a Kinship Fostering Team Manager within Birmingham Children's Trust's Fostering Service. With national reforms underway and an increased focus on kinship care, it is truly an exciting time to be involved in this area. The Trust has demonstrated a strong commitment to ensuring more children can remain within their family network, a goal that aligns with the evolving landscape of kinship support. If you are passionate about making a difference and eager to be part of these positive changes, this could be a fantastic chance to join us!
The Kinship Team provides supervision and support to kinship foster carers following their approval through Foster Panel. Reporting to the Head of Service for Fostering Support, you will lead a dedicated and experienced team of four staff members, providing management oversight and professional support to social workers and senior practitioners.
You will play a key role in ensuring the delivery of high-quality assessments that identify the strengths, needs, and support requirements of kinship carers, helping to create stable, nurturing environments where children can thrive and achieve the best possible outcomes.
The wider team consists of nine Supervising Social Workers, two Senior Practitioners, and a Social Work Assistant. The service is well established and known for its supportive and collaborative culture. As part of the wider Fostering Management Team, you will join an experienced, permanent leadership group that works closely together and warmly welcomes new colleagues.
At the heart of this role is a commitment to ensuring that the welfare, safety, and individual needs of children in care remain central to all aspects of fostering support and practice.
Key Responsibilities
In this role, you will:
• Lead and manage a child-centred service that complies with all relevant legal, regulatory, and statutory requirements, delivering high-quality assessments, effective support to foster carers, and improved outcomes for children.
• Provide leadership and oversight to social workers and senior practitioners, ensuring the delivery of high-quality practice and fostering continuous professional development within the team.
• Effectively manage allocated resources to deliver the aims and objectives of Birmingham Children's Trust, while contributing to the development of innovative approaches to fostering services.
We have been rated as ‘Good’ by Ofsted, following a 2023 inspection. This is a fantastic achievement for Birmingham Children's Trust, with many positive highlights focusing on areas including the quality of staff leadership, partnership working, safeguarding and corporate parenting.
This is a hybrid role based in Birmingham, UK so you must have the correct right-to-work documents to work in the UK. Sadly, we do not support those who require sponsorship or on a VISA.
About you
You will have a strong understanding of fostering legislation, regulations, and national developments within Kinship Fostering and Special Guardianship. Experience within a fostering service is highly desirable, together with experience of leading and managing staff within a social care setting.
You will bring a commitment to achieving positive outcomes for children and young people, alongside the ability to provide effective leadership, support, and professional challenge to your team.
Experience of working with children and families within a safeguarding environment is desirable. You will be responsible for quality assuring practice across the team, ensuring compliance with fostering regulations, statutory guidance, and quality standards, while promoting a culture of continuous improvement and high-quality service delivery.
You will also play an active role in the ongoing development of the service, leading on key areas of work such as the continued growth of the Mockingbird programme and initiatives to strengthen the recruitment, support, and retention of our foster carers.
This is an excellent opportunity for an experienced and motivated manager who is passionate about fostering services and committed to delivering the very best outcomes for children, young people, and their families.
Additional Information
Interviews will be held in person on Friday 19 June 2026.
As part of the application process, please submit your CV and a supporting statement clearly demonstrating your skills and experience for this role.
Onboarding Process
Please note as part of our onboarding process, the successful candidate will be required undergo a series of background checks with Experian including Experian DBS, Experian Right to Work, and Digital ID verification. These are essential pre-employment requirements.
Our Benefits
• A generous annual leave package of 30 days annual leave, plus bank holidays, rising to 33 days after 5 years of service and 35 days after 10 years of service.
• Free on-site parking at our offices on One Avenue Road (Aston) and Lifford House (Stirchley). We also provide onsite electric car charging ports which are free to use!
• Full access to our amazing internal employee benefits scheme including, Occupational Health services, Rewards Schemes, Benefits discounts (including the Blue Light Card), Health & Fitness and Personal Wellbeing support and much more!
• Flexible and hybrid working policy - we are well adapted to a hybrid model of working which includes a combination of time spent in the office and at home and we offer a variety of working patterns.
• Pension Scheme - You will receive a generous local government career average pension scheme in line with the local government pension scheme.
For further information, feel free to contact Robina Gardner (Head of Fostering - support) via telephone on 07484592357 or email [email protected].