Deputy Director of Services and Innovation

Job Reference:
1557
Location:
Homeworking
Hours of Work:
37 hours per week (full-time)
Salary:
£65,782 - £72,959 Additionally, £480 home-based allowance FTE per annum
Contract Type:
Permanent
Closing Date:
28 Sep 2025

About the role

Deputy Director of Services & Innovation, Central Region of England
Service: Services & Innovation

Salary: £65,782 - £72,959 Additionally, £480 home-based allowance FTE per annum

Location: Homebased with regular travel across the central region of England and occasional London Head Office

Hours: 37 hours per week (full-time)

We offer flexible working arrangements - please see below for more details

Contract: Permanent

Family Action & the Role’s Impact:
At Family Action we support people through change, challenge or crisis. It’s what we’ve done for over 150 years. We protect children, support young people and adults and offer direct, practical help to families and communities.

We see first-hand the power of family to shape lives, for better or worse, so we speak up for the
importance of family in national and local policymaking, amplify family voices and represent the changing needs of families in the UK today.

Are you an innovative, strong, team player, who is solution focused and passionate about making a difference in everything you do? Do you have a proven track record of growth and retaining services, delivering excellent, inclusive services and cultivating quality and diversity? Are you looking for a diverse, ambitious and fast paced organisation – if so, you have found it.

About the role:

The roles primary function is to lead the operational teams and lead on strategic development and growth across the region. The post holder will model the organisations values; people focus, can do, excellence and mutual respect.

The Deputy Director leads the strategic development and transformation of Family Action services across the Central region, and implements the organisation’s strategic plan and its 5 key objectives. The role focuses on stakeholder engagement, partnership, service development, and system leadership across sectors. It requires inclusive leadership and the effective line management of Operational Managers and one Assistant Director.

The role has responsibility for service delivery, risk management, performance, quality and practice, safeguarding, income generation and budgets across the region. The post holder drives accountable leadership, innovation, co-creation, and continuous improvement across all the Central region. The Deputy Director will be an excellent communicator, highly resilient, and a decision maker, while always championing Family Action’s values in delivering inclusive, outcome-focused support for children, families, young people and adults.

Main Responsibilities:

• Be accountable for service delivery across the region, contractual performance, safeguarding, quality assurance, risk management, ensuring services meet regulatory standards, delivering positive outcomes and embedding equality, diversity and inclusion in everything we do.
• Lead senior stakeholder engagement and foster strong cross-sector partnerships across the geographic area.
• Line manage Operational Managers, and an Assistant Director, oversee budgets to ensure efficient, cost-effective service delivery. Champion the sharing of learning, development of staff and volunteers and best practice across services to support continuous improvement and innovation.
• Strategic and accountable leadership, leading the region by motivating and galvanizing the team to achieve innovation, growth and quality services maximising outcomes for the people we support
• Working alongside the Business Development & Corporate and Marketing team, drive the region’s income generation through generating and responding to new opportunities, and by leading innovative service design and modelling.
• Be part of a dynamic and supportive team of other regional and national Deputy Directors, sharing and influencing cross-organisational decision making, resource allocation, strategy and organizational development and leadership.

Main Requirements (for details check the job description and person specification):

• Passionate about social justice and improving the life chances and supporting children, young people and adults who experience disadvantage.
• We are looking for someone who has senior level leadership and management experience and expertise in at least one of the settings in social care, health, young people and community sector. Who is highly robust, able to priorities multiple workflows and issues, with a good understanding of and leadership around service risks and decision making.
• We are also looking for someone who can think strategically across systems, contribute to innovation, creativity and diversity, and is an excellent inclusive leader that can inspire their teams as well as their peers and senior leaders in Family Action.
• Appointments are subject to Family Action receiving a satisfactory disclosure from the Disclosure and Barring Service – Enhanced and children’s barred list.

Benefits:
- an annual paid leave entitlement of 30 working days plus bank holidays
- up to 6% matched-pension contributions
- flexible working arrangements and new starters have the right to make flexible working requests from day one of employment
- enhanced paid sick leave and paid family leave provisions
- eye care and winter flu jabs vouchers
- cycle to work scheme
- investing in your professional development with ongoing quality training and career development opportunities

We are forward looking, ambitious and committed to continuous improvement. We are a people focused, can-do organisation, which strives for excellence in all we do and operates with mutual respect.

To Apply:

Click 'Apply Now' to complete our online application form by the closing date of Sunday 28th September at 23:59
Interviews and an assessment exercise will be virtual over Microsoft Teams – Week commencing 13th October.

For any queries, or if you would like to discuss any aspect of the selection process or the potential for flexible working, please email: Helen.cantrell@family-action.org.uk

All appointments with Family Action are subject to satisfactory Safer Recruitment checks.
Our commitment to Equality, Diversity & Inclusion:

We are happy to consider any reasonable adjustments that candidates may need during the recruitment process and you will be asked whether you require any adjustments if shortlisted for interview. We also make reasonable adjustments on the job, where required.

We are committed to Equality, Diversity & Inclusion in all that we do and welcome applications from all sections of the community. Intersectionality is important to us and we particularly welcome applications from ethnically diverse communities, LGBTQIA+ candidates and disabled candidates because we are committed to increasing the representation of these groups at Family Action. We know that greater diversity will lead to even greater results for families and children and we strive for our workforce to be truly representative of the diverse communities we support.

We offer a guaranteed interview scheme for disabled applicants who meet the minimum criteria for the role. For this vacancy, we are also applying positive action to improve the representation of people of colour in management roles at Family Action. As such, the guaranteed interview scheme is extended to applicants of colour who meet the minimum criteria.

To help remove financial barriers to working with us, we will reimburse travel costs if you are invited to attend an interview in person.