About the role
We are recruiting an Interim Head of Sufficiency to provide senior strategic leadership and operational oversight of our placement sufficiency programme. The postholder will drive delivery of the Sufficiency Action Plan, strengthen cross-department alignment, and ensure sufficiency activity translates into improved outcomes for children and measurable financial impact.
What success looks like
* Clear line of sight from the Sufficiency Action Plan to governance, reporting, risks, decisions, and measurable impact.
* Reduced reliance on residential provision through stronger fostering sufficiency and sharper pathways to step-down, stability, and reunification where safe and appropriate.
* Stronger market management with consistent provider engagement, improved negotiation, and decisions grounded in needs and affordability.
* Forecasting and benefits tracking that supports real-time decision-making and drives delivery in line with our Valuing Care Approach.
About you
You will be a credible senior leader with a strong track record in children's social care sufficiency, placements, commissioning, market management, and performance oversight.
The role reports to the Director for Corporate Parenting and Quality and provides senior leadership to the Sufficiency Core Group, supporting robust reporting and governance through the Sufficiency Board.
Stoke-on-Trent has many areas of strong practice. However, the current level of demand and the number of children in care create acute challenges for placement capacity and cost. This role exists to maintain pace, bring grip to delivery, and improve how we match children to the right homes quickly and sustainably.
A key requirement is to reduce reliance on residential children's homes by strengthening foster care sufficiency, working closely with our internal fostering service and external partners.
The postholder will also lead our newly established Valuing Care approach, ensuring practice-led insights translate into step-down, reunification, placement stability, and faster home-finding.
What you will be responsible for
* Lead the coordinated delivery of the Sufficiency Action Plan, ensuring clear progress against milestones, clear ownership of workstreams, and active risk management.
* Strengthen alignment across fostering, residential services, commissioning, brokerage, social work teams, and strategic finance, ensuring a joined-up approach to demand pressures and placement decision pathways.
* Work with commissioning and brokerage on market shaping activity with independent fostering agencies, external residential providers, and supported accommodation services, ensuring provider engagement and negotiation is aligned to sufficiency priorities and financial modelling.
* Support the development and embedding of improved forecasting processes, opportunity tracking, demand projections, and benefits realisation, so that impact is visible, measurable, and acted on.
* Work closely with the Valuing Care lead and panel process so that practice-led insights identify and deliver step-down, reunification, and placement stability opportunities, and inform commissioning.
Eden Brown Synergy is an equal opportunities employer.
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