As the Municipal Journal’s Local Authority of the Year 2025 and Senior Leadership Team of the Year 2024, Stockport is a borough with real momentum and a clear sense of purpose. We’re known for strong partnerships, collaborative system leadership and a genuine commitment to improving the lives of our residents. As part of the Greater Manchester family, we work across boundaries, think creatively and deliver with ambition. We’re also honest about the challenges we face, from inequalities to the wider financial climate, and that’s exactly why this role is so important.
We’re looking for an Executive Director of Children’s Services who wants to make a real difference. Someone who brings ambition, warmth, partnership spirit and a deep commitment to children and families.
This is a big role in a place with big plans. Our shared 15‑year vision, One Stockport, One Future, is all about helping everyone in Stockport live happy and healthy lives. It brings together public services, businesses, the voluntary, community, faith and social enterprise sector, and our communities around 5 major long‑term ambitions.
Our Stockport Family model brings this to life. It puts children and families at the heart of service delivery with an emphasis on prevention, early help, strengths and asset-based approaches, community capacity building and neighbourhood working. It aims to draw demand upstream; meeting needs earlier and developing the best conditions for children to thrive and resultant reduction in spend.
Services are organised around delivery footprints, which enable children and families to receive support in the locations that make sense to them; providing better continuity of support and enabling the use of data to gain insight for a fuller picture of need and service provision in each locality.
Alongside this, our Council Plan sets out how we’ll tackle today’s challenges head on through strong leadership, partnership and a relentless focus on delivering for every resident.
As our Executive Director of Children’s Services, you’ll be right at the heart of this. You’ll join a stable political environment, with 63 councillors, a clear majority and a Corporate Leadership Team that works collaboratively, openly and with real purpose. Our Corporate Peer Challenge described us as “an impressive organisation with strong relationships, a clear sense of purpose and a workforce proud to serve its communities”. That’s exactly the environment you’ll be stepping into.
We’re also clear about where we are on our improvement journey. Our recent Ofsted visit recognised the commitment of our workforce and the solid foundations we have in place. It also highlighted areas where we need to strengthen practice. Stockport has a long history of strong children’s services, and we’re determined to build on that. For the incoming Executive Director, this represents an opportunity to build on strong foundations, restore momentum and lead the next phase of improvement across children’s social care, safeguarding, early help and partnership delivery.
This is a moment of real opportunity: the ambition is high, the organisation is fully behind the work, and there’s a genuine appetite for positive change.
This is a place where collaboration genuinely means something. Where relationships are strong. Where partners want to work with us. And where you’ll have the support, trust and space to lead.
If you’re motivated by purpose, excited by change and ready to help shape the future for children and families in one of Greater Manchester’s most dynamic boroughs, we’d love to hear from you.