Thank you for your interest in this exciting opportunity at Durham County Council. This is a brand new post, created to bolster and develop our services for children in care. The role includes responsibility for residential services, fostering services and our children in care and care leavers service, and the postholder will also work closely with our Regional Adoption Agency (which includes Cumbria and Sunderland). We are ambitious for our children in care and whilst these services were judged good at the last Ofsted inspection in 2019 we continue to strive for excellence.

We are about to undertake an exciting period of growth within the service. Like many authorities, we want our children in care to stay within the county and remain close to their communities. We have ambitious plans to develop a wide range of new provision for children in care and care leavers over the next three to five years with some significant additional investment. We have recently reviewed our care leavers strategy alongside young people and are determined to continue to strengthen a local offer that we are already really proud of.

This is a great but demanding role, and we are seeking candidates with a passion for supporting children and young people, with the experience and determination to drive this change agenda.

You will be joining a supportive senior leadership team where high quality relationships with each other and with the people we work with underpin our values. We are ambitious for our children and young people, progressive and open to learning and innovation in order to deliver excellent services.

Please do look at the information within this website, and I look forward to meeting you in due course.

Best wishes
Helen Fergusson
Head of Children’s Social Care