Welcome to Leeds – A Child Friendly City

Our vision is for the city to be a great place to grow up; a child friendly, compassionate, sustainable and economically successful city where children and young people feel welcome, safe, and where they have the right opportunities and support to achieve their full potential. A key part of this is listening – giving our young people a voice at the top table to tell us what it is like to grow up in Leeds.

We’re getting it right. Ofsted have rated us as Outstanding in our overall effectiveness, and through the Strengthening Families Protecting Children programme we are now supporting other local authorities to improve the lives of their children and young people too.

At Leeds City Council we have a culture of excellence and are continually striving to drive up standards. We are building on the recommendations of a positive peer review in November 2022 to help us deliver the next phase of our Best City Ambition, which provides a shared vision for all city partners based on the interlinked pillars of: Health and Wellbeing; Inclusive Growth; and Zero Carbon.

This is an exciting time to join the team as we undertake our refresh and launch of the Children and Young People plan for the next 5 years and deliver this as well as ensuring effective delivery of our SEND and Inclusion Strategy.

We still have the professional challenges that you would expect within a large and diverse city, alongside the more recent impact of COVID-19.

We are recruiting to two Deputy Director roles in our service, one leading on social care and the other on learning. These roles offer the chance to build on what we have achieved in Leeds and to share our experience and insight on a regional, national and international stage, and we expect our Deputy Directors to bring experience of operating in a similar setting.

As Deputy Director Social Care you will build on what we do well, and quickly identify what can be better - working with others to design and deliver the right response. You should be someone who collaborates well - working with colleagues, partners and the community to really understand what people need and enhancing our ‘high support, high challenge’ culture.

Leeds is an ambitious city, and if you can offer a compelling track record across children social care and the desire to build on existing good practice it will be the ideal place to influence and shape innovation: at home, in schools and further afield. Children and Families are at the heart of our growth strategy – be part of it.

These are very visible roles in an organisation where expectations are high, so you’ll need to be confident in managing the scrutiny and attention that comes with a portfolio that is central to ambitions for our city.

For more information or to arrange a discussion about the role, please contact Julie Longworth, Director of Children and Families, at julie.longworth@leeds.gov.uk