Registered Manager

New Residential Children's Home (2 Bed, EBD) within an Established Provider with 4 Other Homes

Loughborough, Leicestershire

£50,000 to £60,000 basic salary, plus £10,000 annual bonus (DOE)

We're recruiting a Registered Manager to open and lead a brand new children's home in Loughborough, Leicestershire, the fifth service for an established residential childcare provider, supporting young people with emotional and behavioural difficulties. This is a role offering a basic salary of between £50,000 and £60,000 depending on experience, plus a £10,000 annual bonus, which gives genuinely strong earning potential for someone willing to take on the responsibility of building a home and a team from the very beginning.

If you've looked at "new home, new manager" adverts before, you'll probably know they can be a bit of a gamble, since plenty of them come from providers opening homes for the first time with no real track record to lean on.

This one's a different shape of opportunity because the organisation behind it already runs four homes across Northamptonshire that have been consistently rated good by Ofsted, and it's bringing that same proven model into Leicestershire. You'd be the person shaping this particular home day to day, but you wouldn't be doing it blind, with established policies, training structures and clinical support already built and ready to apply from day one.

The wider organisation was founded by someone who spent close to two decades working with adults experiencing homelessness before turning that experience toward children's residential care instead, and the business has recently brought in a new chief executive specifically to support this stage of growth, working alongside the founder and the Responsible Individuals already in post. That's a fairly deliberate way to expand, investing in leadership infrastructure before opening new doors rather than after, and it tends to translate into managers who feel properly supported rather than left to work it out alone. There's also genuine access to a multidisciplinary clinical team, including psychologists and therapists, which matters a fair bit when you're setting the tone and the systems for a home from its very first day.

What you'll be doing

• Leading the opening and registration of a brand new children's home, including setting up systems, routines and culture from the ground up

• Holding Ofsted registration as the home's Registered Manager, and preparing the service thoroughly for its first inspection under the social care common inspection framework

• Recruiting, inducting, training and developing a brand new staff team, building the kind of culture you'd genuinely want to work within yourself

• Working closely with the organisation's senior leadership, Responsible Individual and external clinical specialists to design individualised, trauma informed care from the very start

• Leading on safeguarding, risk assessment and safer recruitment practice as the team is built, making sure every member of staff holds an enhanced DBS check and the right level of training

• Building relationships with placing authorities, local schools and other professionals as young people begin to move into the home

• Ensuring the home consistently meets the Children's Homes (England) Regulations 2015 and the accompanying Quality Standards from day one

• Managing budgets, quality assurance systems and statutory paperwork, including Regulation 44 visits and Regulation 45 reviews, as the home becomes operational

What you'll bring

• A Level 5 Diploma in Leadership and Management for Residential Childcare, or a genuine, demonstrable commitment to completing it within the required timeframe

• Proven experience as a Registered Manager, ideally including some experience setting up or stabilising a new service, though a strong Deputy ready to step up will also be considered

• Strong working knowledge of Ofsted's inspection framework, the Quality Standards and the Children's Homes Regulations 2015

• Real experience supporting young people with emotional and behavioural difficulties, ideally with trauma informed or therapeutic approaches

• A full, valid UK driving licence, given the travel involved in setting up a new service and attending meetings across the area

• The kind of resilience and clear thinking that opening a new home properly demands, since the early months will ask more of you than a settled home would

• A genuine excitement about building something from the ground up, rather than simply maintaining what's already there

On the salary, a range of £50,000 to £60,000 plus a £10,000 annual bonus reflects the fact that opening a brand new home is genuinely different work to managing an established one, and the package has been built with that in mind. Where you land within that range will come down to experience, particularly if you've done this kind of setup work before.

If the idea of shaping a home from its very first day, rather than stepping into someone else's systems, sounds like the kind of challenge you've been waiting for, it's probably worth a conversation before you decide either way. We can talk you through exactly what's already in place, what you'd genuinely be building yourself, and what support looks like during those first few months, so you're going in with your eyes open. Send your CV across or drop us a message, and we'll take it from there, no pressure, just an honest conversation about whether this could be the right move for you.