Practice Lead – Families First

Hackney is one of the most dynamic and progressive local authorities in the UK. We are a resilient, vibrant, and creative borough in the heart of London, with strong, diverse communities and a powerful set of shared values.

Over the past twenty years, the Council has built up first-class services, outstanding public infrastructure, and a reputation for excellence, innovation, and ambition. We are leading the way on essential work such as our fight for equity in Hackney with a particular focus on becoming an actively anti-racist borough. But the work doesn’t stop there, we are proactive in our approach to bringing fairness to all aspects of life including gender, neurodiversity and across the poverty divide.

This new post has been established to contribute to developing best practice within the Families First Social Care Reforms. Reporting directly to the Service Manager, you will form part of the Leadership Team and be responsible for ensuring that day-to-day social work practice is in line with Hackney’s Systemic, Trauma-Informed and Anti Racist practice model.

Following our 2024 Ofsted “Good” rating, you will assist and advise on how we continue the journey towards delivering Outstanding Service Delivery for the Children and Families in Hackney.

This crucial role will lead practice improvement, providing expertise, knowledge, and experience across services within the Directorate.

This role will be working with practitioners in areas such as Systemic, Trauma-Informed, and Anti-Racist practice, safeguarding, leadership, management, training, extra-familial harm, service improvement and triangulation of learning from quality assurance, ensuring a direct impact on the quality of engagement and outcomes with children and families in Hackney, as well as the professional development of practitioners across the Directorate. Overall, you will play a vital role in ensuring that our services remain impactful, effective, and aligned with the highest standards of practice excellence.

As the Practice Lead, you will contribute to the shaping of a confident, professional, and respectful service that always places children at the centre. Your strong leadership skills will enable you to engage social workers, managers, senior leads, and multi-agency partners to embed the very best practice based upon research, quality assurance, and feedback from our children and families to ensure that we achieve the very best outcomes for children in Hackney. You will have an in-depth understanding of risk, assessment, care planning, and quality assurance.

You will be responsible and accountable for ensuring that learning is systematically embedded, contributing to quality assurance of practice and supporting strategic change in order that our services for Children and Families become outstanding.

As part of our journey to be anti-racist, we want our workforce to represent the community we serve and embrace diverse talent, so we strongly encourage applications from Black and Global Majority Ethnic backgrounds.

About You:

A strong practitioner and leader with a proven capacity to create service-wide change in the interests of children and families, you will be dedicated to our STAR approach, committed to child-centred safeguarding practices, and to identifying and challenging discrimination and racism. You will be creative, analytical, and reflective, and be willing to work hard to improve outcomes for children and young people. You will have excellent communication, negotiation, and diplomacy skills to effectively create change.

Candidates must:

• – Hold a relevant social work qualification
• – Be registered with Social Work England
• – Have substantive experience in supervising and leading social workers
• – An enhanced DBS check is required.

As a Council, our most outstanding asset is our staff, who are highly dedicated to serving our residents and committed to our goals as an organisation.

If you want to work in a place where you can represent our values so we achieve the best for our residents, please click on the apply button below.

We operate a fair and open anonymous selection process. Therefore, we do not accept supporting statements or CV’s.

To proceed with your application, you will need to create an account and submit your application.

As part of the application process, you will need to complete a number of competency based questions. These questions allow you to demonstrate your suitability for the role and provide examples of your skills, knowledge and experience outlined in the job description.

We understand the benefits of using AI in the workplace. However, if you are thinking of using this tool to submit your application, we ask you to think about what value it will add. AI tools tend to lack the personal touch and authenticity we value in candidates. We encourage you to showcase your unique knowledge and skills using your own voice.

Closing date for applications: 8 April 2026 (22.59)

Interview date: 27/ 28 April 2026

We are also working towards our vision, which is to be a place for everyone; where residents and staff can be proud; a place that celebrates diversity and where everyone can feel valued, included and involved. In order to achieve this, we look for people who are: Proud; Ambitious; Pioneering; Open; Proactive; Inclusive.

Hackney Council works to eradicate discrimination on the basis of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation. We also recognise that people can be disadvantaged by their social and economic circumstances, so we will also work to eliminate discrimination and disadvantage caused by social class. We also welcome those interested in flexible working. We particularly welcome applications from disabled people, as this group is currently under represented in our workforce.

The Council has a dedicated employment support service (Hackney Works), which offers Hackney residents guidance in relation to applying for jobs. If you are thinking about applying for a job, please contact the Hackney Works team to find out what support is available: hackneyworks@hackney.gov.uk