Service Manager – Look Ahead Care and Support, Tower Hamlets

Service Manager

We’re looking for a Innovative, organised and resilient Service Manager to join our Mental Health Social Care Services in Tower Hamlets.

£43,000.60 per hour annum, working 40 hours per week.

Want to feel like you have an exciting future? You’ll feel at home here.
Making you feel at home here means helping you thrive in every way. That’s why we offer a wide range of benefits, award-winning Learning & Development and a culture that welcomes all. These aren’t token gestures - we’ve thought long and hard about how best to support our team. After all, our people are doing something amazing: helping to transform lives every day.

Our benefits include:
• Annual leave increasing up to 30 days with length of service
• A generous pension – we will contribute up to 8% and life assurance cover up to 3x Pensionable Salary (T&Cs apply)
• Exclusive discounts and cashback via Reward Gateway® and opportunity to buy a Blue Light Card
• Fully paid induction programme and further training
• ILM courses and Apprenticeship Programmes
• Cycle to work scheme
• Employee Assistance Programme for 24-7 confidential support
• Online wellbeing resources
• Quarterly Staff Awards to reward & recognise our amazing staff’s commitment and contribution
• Free DBS
All applicants must be legally eligible to work in the UK by the start of employment as Look Ahead are not able to offer sponsorship.

Tabard Court provides specialist step-down support and accommodation for men with significant mental health needs and offending histories. The service supports customers to move from secure or other specialist mental health settings towards greater independence, recovery and sustainable community living.
The service combines accommodation, rehabilitation, structured support, housing management and day-to-day forensic risk management. It works in close partnership with the Forensic Outreach Service (FOS), care coordinators, social supervisors, psychiatrists, psychologists, commissioners, local authorities and other agencies.
The Service Manager is responsible for the effective day-to-day operational management of the service, including leadership of the staff team, safe and secure service delivery, customer outcomes, housing management, quality, financial and contractual performance, health and safety, safeguarding, medication governance and effective stakeholder relationships.

The working pattern for this role includes; Mon-Fri, 9-5pm with flexible working when required

What you’ll do:
The Service Manager is responsible for the effective management of all aspects of service delivery, including line management of relevant frontline staff and effective management of stakeholder relationships.
1. Service Leadership, Customer Knowledge and Relational Practice
• Maintain an up-to-date working knowledge of every customer's baseline presentation, communication style, routines, relationships, strengths, vulnerabilities, triggers, early warning signs, protective factors, risk factors, medication arrangements, legal or forensic restrictions and agreed support and risk-management plans.
• Remain visible and accessible within the service and have sufficient direct contact with customers to identify subtle changes that may not be apparent through scheduled keywork, handovers or electronic records.
• Ensure staff know customers well enough to identify meaningful changes and compare these with baseline, history and wider context rather than viewing behaviours or incidents in isolation.
• Develop credible and respectful relationships with customers while maintaining clear professional boundaries, consistency and appropriate authority.
• Use trauma-responsive and psychologically informed approaches that recognise the impact of mental illness, institutionalisation, secure care and criminal justice involvement while maintaining clear expectations, accountability and risk awareness.
• Exercise proportionate judgement when responding to hostility, threats, refusal, boundary-testing or conflict, recognising when formal action is required and when a supportive, restorative or relational intervention is more appropriate.
• Lead creative and ambitious customer involvement arrangements and ensure customers are meaningfully involved in their support, the running of the service and wider service development.
• Ensure practice remains focused on rehabilitation, social inclusion, independence and reduced offending risk, not solely on task completion or tenancy maintenance.
2. Forensic Risk Leadership, Relational Security and Positive Risk-Taking
• Provide operational leadership for forensic and mental health risk management across the service and ensure risk is understood as a dynamic process requiring observation, formulation, review and action.
• Maintain a strong working understanding of structured professional judgement approaches used by the forensic team, including HCR-20, and translate relevant risk formulations into practical day-to-day staff actions.
• Understand and apply the distinction between historical, clinical and dynamic risk factors; acute and longer-term risk; triggers and early warning signs; protective factors; relapse indicators; and risk assessment, formulation and management.
• Ensure staff understand and apply relational, procedural and physical security, including the importance of knowing customers, noticing change, sharing information, maintaining professional curiosity and using proportionate environmental and procedural safeguards.
• Maintain oversight of high-risk, deteriorating or complex situations and ensure contingency plans identify observable signs, staff actions, management thresholds, out-of-hours arrangements and escalation routes.
• Identify patterns across incidents, medication changes, absences, interpersonal conflict, substance use, self-care, engagement and environmental changes.
• Promote defensible positive risk-taking that supports recovery, autonomy, community access and move-on while ensuring risks are clearly understood, mitigated and reviewed.
• Contribute relevant operational evidence to HCR-20/reviews, CPA meetings, MDT discussions, risk reviews, placement reviews and other clinical forums.
3. FOS, MDT, Safeguarding and Professional Integration
• Develop and maintain high-quality working relationships with FOS and the wider forensic MDT, recognising that effective step-down care depends on integrated working between housing, support and clinical services.
• Proactively ensure Tabard Court is appropriately represented in risk reviews, care-planning meetings, CPA meetings, safeguarding discussions, discharge planning, medication reviews, move-on meetings and other forums where the service holds material information or operational responsibility.
• Ensure information provided to care coordinators, social supervisors, psychiatrists and other professionals is timely, concise, evidence-based and clear about changes from baseline, actions already taken, outstanding risks and the specific input required.
• Take appropriate action within the competence and remit of Tabard Court before or alongside referring matters onward, including in relation to self-care, accommodation condition, engagement, interpersonal difficulties, safeguarding and emerging deterioration.
• Continue to manage risk and support within the service's remit after a referral or escalation has been made, unless responsibility has been explicitly transferred.
• Lead safeguarding practice within the service and ensure safeguarding cases are managed in line with organisational and statutory protocols, including timely reporting to senior management where required.
• Ensure safeguarding action includes immediate and ongoing protective measures within the service, not solely completion of a referral.
• Provide clear management oversight of serious incidents, near misses, threats, violence, self-harm, substance-related concerns, exploitation, missing/absent episodes, criminal activity and significant deterioration in mental state or functioning.
• Lead post-incident review and ensure learning is translated into revised support plans, risk-management arrangements, staffing approaches, environmental controls or professional escalation where required.
• Work confidently with external agencies and appropriately challenge decisions where the service's direct knowledge of the customer or operational context indicates that an alternative approach should be considered.
4. Medication, Clinical Coordination and Physical Health
• Maintain strong managerial oversight of medication practice and ensure staff comply with organisational medication procedures and customer-specific arrangements.
• Ensure the service has accurate oversight of prescribed medication, administration arrangements, self-medication, refusals, missed doses, stock, leave medication, medication changes, errors and post-discharge medication arrangements.
• Ensure Camascope is used accurately and consistently and that medication records, stock information and escalation arrangements are reliable and auditable.
• Recognise clinically significant patterns of non-adherence, medication-related deterioration or possible side effects and ensure appropriate and timely escalation, while maintaining clear boundaries around clinical prescribing responsibility.
• Coordinate clinics and other clinical activity delivered within the service, including scheduling, communication, suitable space, attendance, information preparation and follow-up.
• Support customers to access primary care, physical healthcare, secondary mental health services and specialist services, and ensure changes in physical or cognitive presentation are not automatically attributed to behaviour or mental illness.
5. Support Planning, Recovery, Activities and Move-On
• Ensure support planning is current, individualised, outcome-focused and informed by the customer's history, strengths, current presentation, risks, protective factors, priorities and move-on needs.
• Maintain managerial oversight of casework allocation and ensure customers are appropriately allocated to support staff while critical information is also held at management level.
• Ensure support plans, goals, milestones, daily records and risk-management information are completed to a high standard and are meaningfully used in practice.
• Lead the development of purposeful, age-appropriate and individualised opportunities for education, employment, volunteering, physical activity, social connection, community participation and personal development.
• Ensure activities are relevant to the interests, abilities and aspirations of the customer group and contribute to rehabilitation, confidence, routine, social inclusion or independence.
• Maintain active oversight of every customer's progression through the step-down pathway, identify barriers to move-on early and work with customers, care coordinators, commissioners, housing teams and other agencies to resolve them.
• Challenge avoidable drift or unnecessarily prolonged placements while balancing timely progression with safe and sustainable move-on.
6. Housing Management, Property, Health & Safety and Fire Safety
• Hold overall responsibility for the housing-management function of the service and ensure customers are supported to understand and meet the requirements of their tenancy, licence or occupancy agreement.
• Maintain oversight of rent or service-charge matters where applicable, property standards, access, neighbour concerns, antisocial behaviour, damage, abandonment concerns, cleanliness, inspections and tenancy or licence breaches.
• Use support, reasonable adjustments, relational intervention and multi-agency planning to prevent avoidable placement breakdown, while using formal housing enforcement proportionately where necessary.
• Recognise when apparent housing non-compliance may be linked to mental illness, trauma, executive functioning difficulties, substance use, cognitive difficulties or institutionalisation and ensure the response addresses both the underlying issue and the tenancy requirement.
• Maintain oversight of repairs, contractor access, utilities, communal areas, security systems, equipment, grounds and gardening, ensuring actions are followed through to completion.
• Ensure Look Ahead health and safety policies are adhered to throughout the service, reviewed locally and understood by staff, with staff competent and appropriately trained.
• Hold operational responsibility for fire safety, emergency procedures, environmental risk, infection control, lone-working arrangements and business continuity.
• Ensure actions arising from fire risk assessments, health and safety audits, property inspections, quality visits and contractor reports are tracked through to completion.
7. Staff Leadership, Workforce Management and Development
• Successfully lead and motivate the Team Leader, Specialist Support Workers and Support Workers, championing and maintaining a positive local culture and clear standards of practice.
• Work continuously to improve staff competence and ensure appropriate ownership of staff issues, timely performance management and effective conflict resolution.
• Deliver effective, professional and appropriately commercially aware briefings, team meetings, supervision and reflective discussions, ensuring information and communication flow effectively across the service and into senior management.
• Set clear expectations for customer engagement, professional curiosity, record quality, risk management, medication practice, safeguarding, housing work, boundaries and follow-through.
• Ensure staff are trained and competent in areas relevant to the service, including forensic mental health, psychosis and relapse, trauma-informed practice, safeguarding, medication, suicide and self-harm, substance use, professional boundaries, de-escalation, risk management, relational security, housing management, information governance and digital systems.
• Manage recruitment, induction, probation, attendance, conduct, capability and development in accordance with Look Ahead procedures.
• Report staff changes to HR and Payroll as required, including starters, leavers, contractual changes and additional hours.
• Maintain and review staff succession planning in line with organisational requirements.
• Develop staff capability and delegate appropriately while retaining managerial oversight of essential actions and ensuring delegated work is completed to the required standard.
• Create a culture in which staff can raise concerns, uncertainty and mistakes early, with appropriate support, learning and accountability.

8. Digital Systems, Information Quality and Records
• Demonstrate a high level of IT literacy and ensure competent use of all relevant business IT systems, organisational frameworks and digital processes.
• Maintain strong working knowledge of Nourish and Camascope and ensure staff use both systems accurately, consistently and within required timescales.
• Use electronic records proactively to identify deteriorating engagement, incident patterns, medication non-adherence, overdue reviews, missed actions, recurring housing issues and emerging service-level risk.
• Ensure data quality is sufficient for clinical decision-making, safeguarding, audit, commissioner reporting, organisational assurance and continuity of care.
• Lead implementation of new digital systems, system changes and service-level process changes, ensuring staff are trained and local practice is adapted appropriately.
9. Contract, Finance, Performance, Quality and Business Management
• Drive business planning activities within the contract, ensuring relevant and appropriately challenging objective setting, ongoing performance tracking and development of recovery or turnaround action plans where necessary.
• Using sound financial and accounting principles, manage contract budgets and resources to deliver corporate and local financial targets and ensure efficient use of available resources.
• Manage petty cash and other service expenditure in accordance with Look Ahead procedures.
• Plan, organise and prioritise operations within the service to support effective use of staffing, resources and management capacity.
• Lead quality visits, audits and performance reviews using organisational indicators and commissioner requirements, set improvement targets and ensure action plans are completed and embedded.
• Produce and submit required management and performance reports, ensuring local KPI and service data are accurate, current and capable of evidencing service quality and outcomes.
• Drive continuous improvement within the service and contribute to wider organisational improvement, sharing learning and supporting the development of sector best practice.
• Use incidents, safeguarding, complaints, medication errors, customer feedback, staff feedback, quality findings and performance data to identify themes and improve service delivery.
• Ensure all relevant Look Ahead policies, procedures and frameworks are adhered to and translated into safe, effective local practice.
10. Partnerships, Organisational Relationships and Service Development
• Develop key working relationships with customers, clinicians, carers, commissioners, local authorities, housing partners, police, safeguarding services, community organisations and other external parties to support safe and effective service delivery.
• Develop and maintain effective internal management relationships with Look Ahead departments and functions, share best practice and support initiatives that improve organisational performance.
• Where appropriate to the role, contribute client-group specialist knowledge and activity and work with other managers and senior leaders to support integration of specialist practice across the organisation.
• Represent Tabard Court professionally with commissioners and partners and provide clear information about service performance, risk, outcomes, barriers, capacity and development needs.
• Identify and contribute to appropriate service-development and new-business opportunities within the local area and wider organisation.
• Develop community links that increase customers' access to meaningful activity, education, employment, health, housing and social inclusion opportunities.
11. On-Call and Other Management Responsibilities
• Participate in the regional out-of-hours on-call service in accordance with organisational requirements.
• Undertake other management duties commensurate with the designated role level as may reasonably be required by Look Ahead, including temporary or additional management responsibility for other contracts within the designated or an alternative patch where necessary.

This is not an exhaustive list of all the duties and responsibilities that may be required from time to time and is subject to change in accordance with the needs of Look Ahead.

About you:
Personal Attributes
• Ability to lead and motivate staff to deliver excellent services and maintain clear standards in a complex, dynamic environment.
• Calm, resilient and able to remain thoughtful and professionally boundaried when faced with hostility, threats, conflict, uncertainty or professional disagreement.
• Practical, logical and well organised, with the ability to manage multiple competing clinical, operational, housing, staffing and contractual priorities.
• Confident, respectful, articulate and sensitive in communication, with the ability to build trust while maintaining professional authority.
• Motivated towards excellence, continuous learning and improvement, with a practical and solution-focused approach.
• Able to respond constructively to challenging and diverse behaviour and to distinguish between behaviour requiring enforcement and behaviour requiring support, curiosity or clinical review.
• Warm, approachable and comfortable engaging directly with customers and participating in the life of the service.
• Highly observant and professionally curious, with the ability to notice small changes while retaining oversight of the wider service picture.
• Able to work collaboratively as part of a wider system while remaining self-motivated, accountable and prepared to challenge appropriately.
• Comfortable making decisions under uncertainty and accepting accountability for those decisions.

What you'll bring:
Essential:
• Educated to degree level or equivalent experience.
• Experience of managing contracts and resources and delivering to budget and performance targets.
• Experience of delivering to housing-management performance targets and managing tenancy sustainment within supported accommodation or a comparable setting.
• Experience of effectively managing and developing staff to ensure high-quality service delivery and performance.
• Experience of successfully managing external partnerships and multi-agency relationships.
• Substantial experience working with people with significant mental health needs and offending histories / criminal justice involvement.
• Strong practical understanding of forensic risk formulation and management, including dynamic risk, protective factors, relapse indicators, positive risk-taking and relational security.
• Working knowledge of relevant legal and statutory frameworks, including the Mental Health Act, restricted/conditionally discharged patients, Community Treatment Orders, Section 117 aftercare, safeguarding and information sharing.
• Experience leading safeguarding and serious incident responses and translating learning into practical service changes.
• Experience of medication governance in a supported-care environment, including administration systems, non-adherence, errors, self-medication and escalation.
• Strong knowledge of health and safety, fire safety and building-management responsibilities in a 24-hour service.
• Ability to build credible multi-agency relationships and represent the service confidently in MDT, risk-review, safeguarding and commissioner forums.
• High level of IT literacy and ability to use electronic care-management and eMAR systems, including the ability to become highly competent in Nourish and Camascope.
• Excellent written and verbal communication, including concise risk summaries, safeguarding referrals, incident reports, action plans and commissioner/management reporting.

Desirable:
• CMI/NVQ Level 4 or higher, or equivalent management qualification.
• Other relevant professional membership or specialist qualification.
• Formal training in structured professional judgement tools such as HCR-20 or START.
• Experience working within a forensic outreach, secure care or community forensic pathway.
• Knowledge of MAPPA and Ministry of Justice processes relevant to restricted patients.
• Formal safeguarding lead or advanced safeguarding training.
• Medication competency assessor / medication lead experience.
• Housing qualification or detailed knowledge of supported-housing regulation.
• IOSH, fire-safety or other relevant premises-management qualification.
• Previous hands-on experience of Nourish and/or Camascope.
• Experience contributing to service mobilisation, tendering, commissioning or pathway development.
• Experience producing formal reports for clinical, legal or governance forums.

About us:

Look Ahead is a leading, not-for-profit care and support provider in London and the South East. Our vision is to build better lives through social care and housing in local communities. As an organisation we deliver over 100 services, providing support to thousands of customers each year. Our mission is to co-design and deliver services that offer innovative social care solutions and support people to thrive. We work across mental health, homelessness and complex needs, young people and care leavers and learning disabilities so there are plenty of opportunities to grow and progress your career with us.
We have a strong social purpose and we live and work by our values:
• We focus on Excellence and innovation.
• We are Caring and Compassionate.
• We are Inclusive and Trusted.
• We work in Partnership and are One-Team.
Look Ahead is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and adults at risk, and expects all employees, workers and volunteers to share this commitment.

If your application for this role is unsuccessful, but we feel that you would be suitable for another role, we may contact you to discuss alternative opportunities. If this occurs you would not need to submit another application for the alternative role.

We reserve the right to close this advert early if we are able to appoint to the vacancy before the advertised closed date.

We are committed to diversity and inclusion at work and are accredited with Silver in the Inclusive Employers Standard 2021. We are a proud member of the Employers Domestic Abuse Covenant and encourage applications from a diverse range of applicants of all backgrounds.