Youth Justice Operational Manager

Job Description

Organisation: London Borough of Waltham Forest

Salary: PO8 £59,511 - £62,766

Contract Type: Full-time/ Permanent
Working hours per week: 36 hours per week

Application Deadline: 16/01/2026

Proposed Interview Date(s): TBC
Reference: 1957

About Us:

Bursting with culture, energy, and opportunity, the London Borough of Waltham Forest is a fantastic and exciting place to work.

We are a highly ambitious borough. Driven by culture and the innate creativity of our residents, we have developed new and innovative ways to build our communities. Our Council is relentlessly resident-focused, insight-led, digitally driven and commercially minded; a Council focused on meeting the needs of our existing and future residents.

London Borough of Waltham Forest is one of the Mayor of London’s Good Work Standard employers. This accreditation is a proof of our commitment to creating a healthy, fair and inclusive workplace. This includes fair pay and conditions, workplace well-being, skills and progression and diversity and recruitment.

About the role:

Youth & Family Resilience Service (YFRS)

YFRS responds to significant risk factors in the lives of children and young people from early indicators such as poor attendance and disruptive behaviour at school through to offending behaviour and serious violence. The YFRS consists of statutory and voluntary services committed to reducing offending and supporting families through evidence-led interventions.

Youth Justice Service (YJS) Operational Manager

The YJS is a multi-disciplinary team that works with children and young people involved in the criminal justice system to prevent re-offending and support rehabilitation.Through detailed assessments, planning and tailored interventions, Youth Justice Officers, in line with the Youth Justice Board's National Standards, work with children and families to prevent further offending.

The Youth Justice Operational Manager will lead and provide operational management of the Youth Justice Board's framework for all statutory Court and Out of Court outcomes in addition to our voluntary prevention service.

The role has the following aims:

• To lead operations for the Youth Justice Service– in partnership with other managers and statutory partners – for Out of Court and statutory Court disposals (including, Referral Orders, Youth Rehabilitation Orders and Custody)
• To lead on continuous development improvement and performance management for all Out of Court and statutory Court disposals (including, Referral Orders, Youth Rehabilitation Orders and Custody)
• To ensure that operational management of services results in a strengthened response to children and young people’s needs and increases family resilience and well-being.
• To take a lead role – working closely with peer YFRS operational managers – in ensuring systemic, trauma-informed and child-first practice is embedded in partner services, in collaboration with police, education, social care and other services;
• To take a holistic approach to the needs of vulnerable children to ensure the highest quality provision across YFRS and in partner provision;
• To manage, develop, organise and control this professional service area ensuring the delivery of the service meets all council, professional and legislative requirements.

>> Click here to download the Role Profile <<

Key Responsibilities:

This role will directly line manage Youth Justice officers, senior practitioners and specialist workers within the Youth Justice Service. As such, extensive experience of working within the YJS and knowledge and experience of Youth Justice legislation working is required.

This role will lead on:

• Out of Court Disposals (OOCDs) and statutory Post Court outcomes and interventions

• Ensuring OOCDs, Post Court outcomes and both statutory and voluntary interventions are focused on child first and offender second principles.

• Quality assurance of ASSET+ assessments and Prevention And Diversion (PAD) assessments.

• Ensure interventions are applied to all work with children, young people and families, to reduce risk and vulnerability, improve the quality of conversations and relationships, and contribute to the achievement of positive outcomes.

• Ensure assessments and delivery address the needs of victims and the wider community.

• Ensure there are clear safety and risk management plans in place.

• Ensure MAPPA and other high-risk panels are understood and impactful for those assessed as high risk of harm to the community and others.

• Safeguarding children at risk of harm from others.

• Ensure best practice in statutory interventions – including systemic theory, trauma-informed and child-first approaches – are applied across the service

• Lead on the development and implementation of policy and delivery methods that promote child first, desistence of reoffending and protecting and the public

• Contribute to the development of governance frameworks and the implementation of standards, policies, protocols, operating procedures, practice improvement, professional development and training. This includes reporting to and working with relevant Boards on a regular basis.

• Chairing meetings including strategy meetings, OOCD panels and High Risk Panels.

Qualifications and Requirements:

Knowledge

• Significant knowledge of youth justice, safeguarding children and young people, serious group violence and gangs, whole family working, inclusion, systemic theory, trauma informed and childfirst approaches.
• Significant knowledge of specific statutory frameworks and legislation pertaining to youth justice, safeguarding children, school exclusion, and therapeutic intervention. (Crime and Disorder Act 1998, Police Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, Children's Act 2004 and Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008
• Significant knowledge of practice improvement, continuous professional development and performance management in the contexts of youth justice and safeguarding children;

Experience

• Proven track record of successfully providing leadership and management that results in high quality services, better outcomes for children, young people and families.
• Demonstrable experience of working with senior managers, partners and service users to prioritise the best interests of children and young people, to safeguard them from harm and/or prevent them from offending.
• Evidence of success in delivering multi-agency risk assessment and joint decision-making arrangements and building and maintaining partnerships across statutory and voluntary sectors.
• Experience of leading and improving the performance of people and service providers.
• Experience of successfully delivering evaluation of provision, and of influencing practice improvement and outcomes in directly managed services and external agencies.
• Experience of ensuring compliance with legislation, organisational policies and procedures.

Skills

• Ability to provide practice leadership, motivate and develop staff to achieve priorities.
• Ability to work corporately and with partners to seek new and better ways of doing things.
• Ability to collate, monitor, anaylse and present performance data
• Ability to demonstrate commitment to valuing equality and diversity
• Excellent communication and presentation skills, with the ability to communicate ideas, issues, systems and procedures successfully at all levels to a variety of audiences.

Indicative Qualifications

• Educated to degree level or equivalent standard.
• Substantial Continuing Professional Development
• Relevant professional qualification including Professional Certificate in Effective Practice.

Terms and conditions:

The below terms and conditions apply to this role:

• Satisfactory employment references and CIFAS identity checks;
• Satisfactory declaration of interest;
• This role is subject to safer recruitment practices as it involves work with children
• Satisfactory DBS check;
• As a public authority, we must ensure that members of staff in public-facing roles are able to speak fluent English. This means that they must have a command of spoken English, with confidence and accuracy, sufficient for the effective performance of their role. This requirement does not refer to any particular English language qualifications, regional or international accents, dialects, speech impediments or the tone of conversations. It does not require staff to speak only in English.

How to Apply:

Interested candidates are invited to submit their applications online by pressing the ‘Apply’ button below. This includes a supporting statement that outlines to us how your skills and experience make you a good candidate for this vacancy.

We reserve the right to close this vacancy early if we receive sufficient applications for the role. Therefore, if you are interested, please submit your application as early as possible.

Equal Opportunity Employer:

Waltham Forest is a diverse borough where diversity is valued and is integral to both, service delivery and employment of its staff. The Council is proud of its rich mix of communities and as the largest employer in the area, it works hard to respond to the changing needs of its population. We use our statutory duties on race, gender and disability equality and best practice in respect of age, faith and sexual orientation to ensure equality of opportunity in the workplace. The Council is committed to meeting its 4 equality objectives: - Promoting equality of opportunity - Opposing all forms of discrimination, intolerance and disadvantage - Ensuring our workforce reflects the diverse communities of Waltham Forest at all levels. - Providing fair, appropriate, accessible and excellent Services to all. Respecting Diversity is a core Council value.

To support the above and reduce the risk of bias in its recruitment activities, the council is operating an anonymous shortlisting process, which hides personal information that can identify individuals until their application has been considered for shortlisting. The council also operates a scheme whereby, for jobs graded up to and including scale SO2, internal candidates are considered first. This includes those candidates who self-identify as having a disability for the purposes of the Disability Confident scheme. For more information, please refer to our recruitment and selection policy.

We are keen to support employees to balance their working life with other commitments. Therefore, wherever possible, we will consider working arrangements that suit an individual's personal circumstances whilst still meeting the needs of the Council. If you would like to discuss the possible flexible working options that might be applicable to this role, please contact the person named below or feel free to discuss this during your interview.

For more information on the benefits of working for the Council, please visit https://www.walthamforest.gov.uk/jobs-and-training/find-jobs-and-other-opportunities/working-us.

Contact Information:

If you have any questions about this vacancy or the application process, please contact Anne-Marie Koroma, at anne-marie.koroma@walthamforest.gov.uk or 07776660067.

If you have any technical issues when trying to apply for this post, please contact our Recruitment Team via email at recruitment@walthamforest.gov.uk.

The Council’s preference is for online application. However, if you have a disability and are unable to complete an online application, please email recruitment@walthamforest.gov.uk so we can arrange an alternative application method.

Click here for further information on the Human Resources recruitment privacy notice.