Senior Residential Support Worker (Team Leader)

• Solo EBD Children’s Home

• Bolton (BL2)

• £15.00 to £15.90 per hour DOE + £50 per sleep

• Ofsted Good registered home

This is a Senior Residential Support Worker role in Bolton, working across solo placements for young people with complex emotional and behavioural needs, paying £15.00 to £15.90 per hour depending on your experience, with 160 contracted hours a month built around 12-hour shifts and sleep-ins, and plenty of regular overtime for anyone who fancies giving their monthly pay a proper boost.

The organisation behind it

This is a Bolton-based provider of therapeutic residential care for children and young people aged 7 to 18, set up with a clear ambition to grow carefully through smaller homes where every child gets proper individual attention. Their whole ethos centres on creating a home from home, somewhere a young person can build resilience, pick up real life skills and gain the confidence to move towards independence, with sports, arts, holidays and personal interests all part of everyday life in the home.

What stands out, potentially more than anything, is how much weight they put on language and relationships. They talk openly about using words that care, about therapeutic practice running through everything the adults say and do, and about investing in upskilling their staff so the team keeps getting better at making a positive difference. Therapeutic support sits within the model itself, which means you’ll be working alongside people who think about the why behind behaviour as much as the what.

Because the plan is to open more small homes over time, there’s a genuine appetite to grow leaders from within, so if you’re a Senior who can see yourself stepping into a Deputy role and maybe one day running a home of your own, this is a place where that conversation will be welcomed. Equally, if you’re happiest leading shifts and want to stay at Senior level for a while, that’s completely respected too.

What you’ll be doing

• Leading shifts with confidence, guiding and supporting Residential Support Workers so the young person experiences consistent, predictable care from every adult around them

• Building a trusting, therapeutic relationship with one young person and helping the team understand their story, their triggers and what helps them feel safe

• Keeping safeguarding front and centre, making sound decisions in the moment and recording clearly and accurately

• Using trauma-informed, relational approaches to support behaviour, co-regulation and repair after difficult moments

• Helping shape the routines, standards and culture of a brand-new home from the very start

• Modelling reflective practice, encouraging honest conversations in debriefs and supervision, and helping newer staff grow in confidence

• Working alongside the Registered Manager, therapeutic input, social workers, schools and families to keep the young person’s plan moving forward

What you’ll bring

• Strong residential childcare experience, ideally within EBD or higher-risk settings

• Experience of leading shifts or working at Senior or Team Leader level

• Level 3 Diploma in Residential Childcare or equivalent, with Level 4 a real advantage

• Confidence around safeguarding, risk assessment and supporting behaviour in a trauma-informed way

• Emotional resilience, a reflective mindset and the ability to stay grounded and supportive when things get busy

• A full UK driving licence and an enhanced DBS, ideally on the update service

• A genuine commitment to improving the lives of children and young people in care

Pay and what comes with it

At £15.00 to £15.90 per hour across 160 contracted hours a month, the base package works out at roughly £21,600 to £22,900 a year before overtime, and with regular extra hours available most Seniors will find they can comfortably take that higher if they want to. The rate reflects the level of responsibility involved in leading solo, complex placements, where your judgement on shift shapes how safe and settled a young person feels, and it sits alongside ongoing training, professional development, a pension, recognition for the work you do, and support for a healthy work-life balance.

If any of this has got you thinking, we’d really love to hear from you, even if you’re only at the stage of quietly wondering whether now’s the right time to move. Send your CV over or drop a message for an informal chat about the home, the young people and what the next few months could look like for you, and we can have an honest conversation about whether this feels like the right fit before anything goes any further.