Quality Lead - Children's Homes

Help shape outstanding services where children and young people can thrive!

Our dedicated team works with energy, compassion and purpose to support children and young people facing complex challenges. We believe that excellent care starts with seeing the individual, understanding their needs, listening to their voice and creating an environment where they feel safe, valued and able to thrive.

We are looking for an experienced and forward-thinking Quality Lead to help us build on this commitment. This is a key role within the organisation, providing strategic oversight while staying closely connected to the people and services that matter most.

The Role

As Quality Lead, you will take an organisation-wide view of quality, performance and impact, ensuring we consistently deliver services that are safe, effective, compliant and genuinely make a difference to children and young people.

Working closely with the leadership team, managers and frontline colleagues, you will bring together quality assurance, performance information, regulatory requirements and continuous improvement. You’ll help us understand not only whether we are meeting the required standards, but how well we are doing, what difference we are making, and where we can do better.

This is an opportunity to influence how our services develop, strengthen organisational practice and help create a culture where learning, accountability and improvement are part of everyday life.

What You’ll Be Doing

You will lead the development and oversight of our quality systems across our children’s homes, regularly engaging with services, staff, children and young people to understand what is working well and where improvements are needed.

A key part of the role will be developing and embedding effective organisational systems and processes that support efficient working and enable us to respond to both current and future needs. You will lead our Performance and Impact Framework, ensuring we have meaningful KPIs, reliable quality and outcome data, and effective ways of evaluating our impact. Your insight will help turn information into learning and support confident, evidence-based decision making.

You’ll work alongside senior leaders to monitor service quality, strengthen policy and practice, support staff learning and maintain strong regulatory compliance. Working with the Service Director and managers across the organisation, you will help ensure our policies and procedures remain relevant, accessible and aligned with legislation, regulation and best practice.

Most importantly, you will help ensure that children and young people have a genuine voice in shaping the services they receive. You’ll champion participation and co-production so that their experiences, ideas and aspirations influence service design, organisational planning, decision making and improvement.

You will also contribute to the continued development of trauma-sensitive and psychologically informed practice across our services, helping create an environment where staff are supported to learn, reflect and continually improve.

As a senior member of the organisation, you will be expected to model our values and behaviours, promote a positive and asset-based culture, and contribute to a strong safeguarding culture. You will work in line with the organisation’s vision, mission and values, alongside requirements around safeguarding, health and safety, data protection, equality, diversity and inclusion.

You may also be asked to undertake other reasonable duties and deputise where appropriate.

What We’re Looking For

We’re looking for someone who combines strategic thinking with practical delivery, someone who can see the bigger picture but is equally comfortable getting into the detail and working alongside teams to make things happen.

You will have experience working in a demanding operational environment and a strong track record of leading continuous improvement and quality management. You’ll understand how to develop meaningful performance measures, use data to demonstrate impact and turn findings into tangible improvements.

You’ll bring knowledge of the legislative and regulatory landscape relevant to children’s homes, supported accommodation, young people’s services or social housing, including an understanding of requirements relating to Ofsted and the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Experience of co-production and service design will be important, particularly where you have worked with staff or young people to improve processes, services or operational delivery. You’ll also have experience of developing, supporting, training or coaching colleagues and helping others build their confidence and capability.

You’ll also need to be:

• A strategic and creative thinker who can identify opportunities, solve problems and adapt to changing circumstances.
• A confident relationship-builder who can quickly establish trust and credibility with people at all levels.
• Highly organised, able to manage competing priorities, work under pressure and consistently deliver results.
• An excellent communicator, both verbally and in writing, with the confidence to present ideas and information clearly.
• Comfortable working with data, performance information and quality measures.
• Digitally confident, with good working knowledge of Microsoft 365, information management systems and other software.
• Someone who enjoys bringing people with them — able to train, coach, influence and inspire others.

Qualifications

A Level 5 or degree-level qualification and equivalent experience is desirable.

Why This Role Matters

This isn’t simply a role focused on compliance or monitoring. It’s about helping shape how we work, how we learn and, ultimately, the experience and outcomes of the children and young people we support.

If you’re passionate about quality, curious about how organisations can improve and motivated by making a meaningful difference, we’d love to hear from you.