Operations Manager - Children's social care

[miriam]

This is NOT a psychology job, it is on the administrative/management side of the company and requires significant experience in operations management, but please pass on the details if you know anyone that might be suitable for this role.

Job Title: Operations Manager (social impact sector)
Company: LifePsychol Ltd
Location: Virtual (with some visits to Matlock, Derbyshire)
Salary: £30,000.00-£35,000.00 per year (pro rata for part time)

Job Description

We are seeking an Operations Manager to help us scale our business to support more vulnerable children.

We are happy to consider full or part-time candidates, and to arrange the work flexibly. The majority of work will be done from home, although some travel will be required and you will need to be able to attend our offices in Matlock, Derbyshire at least one day per month (pandemic permitting).

The salary is £30-£35,000 per annum (pro rata for part-time)

The postholder will:

• Advise MD on strategy & support ongoing business planning/decision making
  Clarify mission/vision
  Develop strategic plan to prioritise opportunities & resource for success
  Build an operational plan to support the businesses strategic plan, ensuring regular reviews and with sustainability & scalability built in.
  Oversee development, motivation and performance of a talented, committed and capable staff team
  Ensure systems work effectively, streamline key business processes where possible
  Map key business processes & improve them, so we work efficiently & professionally & eliminate bottlenecks
  Document policies, process and procedure
  Assist with the practical delivery of Innovate grant project
  Track and claim expenditure against the grant
  Contribute to bids for funding/investment
  Scope additional opportunities, including B2C product and international markets
  Looking at demand vs capacity in different business elements
  Compile annual impact report
  Keep track of costs, assets, materials, premises etc

Apart from relevant qualifications and experience, we want you to share our mission to improve the lives of people who have experienced adversity. You would join a small but growing team of fantastic staff, including clinical, technical, admin and customer support colleagues, who all care passionately about the work we are doing.

We see our people as our greatest resource. We like to give each member of our staff the opportunity to show us what you are capable of. As the company scales, there may be the potential for this role to develop into an Operations Director, or even a COO - but this would be dependent on successfully securing investment and/or customers to help the company scale to a sufficient size for there to be a department for the postholder to manage.

To apply, please send a CV and covering letter explaining how you fit our requirements via the Indeed recruitment portal as soon as possible. We reserve the right to close the vacancy before the specified closing date if we receive sufficient high-calibre applicants.

Background information

LifePsychol is a clinical psychology company that has particular expertise about children and families, particularly when it comes to attachment, parenting and recovery from adversity. The company is small but growing rapidly. Our mission is to improve outcomes for children. Our aim is to change the way that children's psychological needs are looked at in the UK (and then around the world), by identifying both mental health symptoms and needs that are outside the traditional medical model and encompass behaviour, relationships, development, risk and a broad range of indicators of wellbeing. Through identifying needs better, tracking how they change over time, and providing training and consultancy to carers/professionals we want to improve the quality of placements and services for children, starting with those who are in the Care system.

We make a set of online tools to identify and track the psychological needs of children and young people (BERRI), which are used where children have complex needs, particularly for those who live in foster or residential care settings. We are working with a large number of placement providers and local authorities to put children's psychological needs at the centre of the care they receive. This animated case example explains how it works.

Our tools are known by the acronym ‘BERRI’ because they explore Behaviour, Emotional well-being, Risk to self and others, Relationships and Indicators of conditions that need to be understood to care effectively for the child. We want every young person with complex needs to have a service that meets their needs in an effective and evidence-based way. We believe that can improve the outcomes for children whilst saving costs for the public purse.

BERRI is currently used in 265 children's homes, as well as growing numbers of secure units, 16+/care leavers services, foster placements and local authorities. We aim to spread this methodology to other groups of children with complex needs, such as those at the edge of care, or in specialist educational provision, poor school attenders or those who have experienced adversity. We hope to see our system used in every local authority, placement provider, school and charity that provides children's services to inform the way that psychological needs are identified and addressed.

We have recently secured a substantial grant to take our methodology into ten local authorities, and have had increasing international interest. We have also started to look at whether a direct-to-consumer offering would help parents concerned about their child's wellbeing, particularly in the context of the pandemic where traditional services are harder than ever to access. And we are currently exploring the options for taking on additional investment. So you would join us at a very exciting time in the development of our service.

Covid-19 adaptations: We have moved to entirely online working, and digital meetings. As we resume face-to-face meetings we will do so according to appropriate precautions and the preferences of each employee.