Senior Residential Support Worker (Team Leader)

Organisation	Maar Haven Ltd
Location	Corby, Northamptonshire
Reporting to	Deputy Registered Manager / Registered Manager
Direct reports	Residential Support Workers (practice support on shift)
Salary	£27,000 – £30,000 per annum
Contract	Full-time, permanent
Working pattern	Long-day shift (07:00–21:30) and waking nights (21:00–08:00) on a rolling rota. Weekend working expected.

About Maar Haven

Maar Haven is an independently owned children’s residential care organisation based in Corby, Northamptonshire, with the ambition of building one of England’s most therapeutically excellent and consistently Outstanding-rated providers.

Founded by Joseph and Faith Bvumbe, a qualified mental health nurse with direct adolescent, SEND, and forensic youth experience, and an operational director managing a regulated care enterprise currently employing over 130 staff, Maar Haven begins from a foundation of genuine expertise, not aspiration.

Our therapeutic model is built on Dyadic Developmental Practice (DDP/PACE), the Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics (NMT), and a whole-home culture in which trauma-informed thinking shapes every shift, every relationship, and every decision. We do not claim to be trauma-informed. We are building an organisation that is trauma-organised.

Everything in this organisation flows from five core values: Presence, Belief, Integrity, Interdependence, and Continuity. They are not framing. They are the mechanism by which every decision, from a 2am crisis response to a board-level governance review, is made and judged.

PRESENCE The relationship is the work.

BELIEF Every young person is capable of a meaningful future.

INTEGRITY We do things properly when no one is checking, including in safeguarding.

INTERDEPENDENCE Children do not recover alone. Neither do the adults who care for them.

CONTINUITY We do not end when the placement ends.

If you are looking for a quiet, unambitious role in a comfortable organisation, this is not it. If you want to be part of building something genuinely excellent, and you have the skills, values, and drive to contribute to that, we want to hear from you.

Role Purpose

The Senior Residential Support Worker, referred to internally as Team Leader, is the lead practitioner on shift. They are not a manager who occasionally works with children. They are a skilled residential worker who takes leadership responsibility for the quality of practice on every shift they lead.

The Team Leader holds a key worker role, leads the shift team, supports RSW development in real time, and acts as the first point of professional decision-making when the Deputy or RM is not immediately available. This role requires both clinical confidence and safeguarding authority: the Team Leader is the person who makes the safeguarding call at 11pm on a Saturday when the RM is off-duty, and they must be ready to make it without hesitation.

How the Five Values show up in this role Presence: The Team Leader is the adult who is genuinely here, not managing from the office, not half-present while completing records. The shift is the work. Belief: The Team Leader ensures deficit language about young people is challenged the moment it appears in shift conversations, not tolerated, not managed for later. Integrity: The Team Leader completes records during the shift, not two days later. Standards are not maintained for the RM’s benefit. They are maintained because the young people in this home deserve them. Safeguarding is the sharpest expression of Integrity: every concern is recorded and escalated the shift it arises. Interdependence: The Team Leader supports their RSW colleagues’ wellbeing on shift, noticing when someone is struggling and creating space for that, rather than pushing the team to absorb more than it can hold. Continuity: The Team Leader checks that key work sessions are happening, that post-placement contact is being maintained, and that the promise to young people is being kept at ground level.

Key Responsibilities

Shift Leadership

• Lead the shift team as the most senior practitioner on duty, making real-time decisions about deployment, escalation, and practice in response to children’s needs
• Run daily handovers, ensuring the incoming team understands each child’s current emotional state, any concerns from the previous shift, and the therapeutic focus for the day
• Escalate to the Deputy or RM without hesitation whenever a situation exceeds your authority, and document that escalation
• Complete all end-of-shift records within the shift: daily logs, incident reports, medication records, and any referrals made. Records completed two days later are not adequate.

Safeguarding on Shift

• Identify and respond to safeguarding concerns in real time, including disclosures, contextual risks, and behavioural indicators, ensuring every concern is recorded and escalated the same shift it arises, not held over for the next morning
• Apply contextual safeguarding awareness on every shift: notice and name online risks, peer group dynamics, and community factors that may affect each child’s safety
• Brief agency and bank workers at the start of every shift: each child’s needs, active safeguarding concerns, and any risk flags must be communicated before they begin work
• Understand that the safeguarding call at 11pm on a Friday is yours to make. You will be supported, not second-guessed, for making it.

Staff Wellbeing on Shift

• Hold active attention to your team’s wellbeing during each shift, creating space for staff to name what they are finding difficult, rather than expecting them to absorb it silently
• Debrief difficult interactions using the PACE framework as the reflective lens: separating a child’s distress from a staff member’s performance, and naming what each person held
• Escalate colleague wellbeing concerns to the Deputy or RM: a team member experiencing compassion fatigue or secondary trauma is a safeguarding concern, not just a personal matter

Therapeutic Practice and Key Working

• Hold a key worker role for at least two children, maintaining regular documented key work sessions, minimum three per week per child
• Apply the PACE framework as a consistent relational stance in all interactions with children, not a technique deployed in key work sessions, but the atmosphere of the shift
• Use the NMT framework to understand children’s developmental stage and adjust expectations, activities, and responses accordingly
• Support children’s family contact: facilitating what is in the care plan, documenting what happens, and raising concerns where contact is causing harm

Leadership & Accountability

The Team Leader is accountable for the standard of practice on every shift they lead. Records completed during your shift reflect your professional judgement. The Team Leader does not wait to be told what to do, they lead the shift and consult upward when the decision requires it.

Success measures: quality of key work session records; PACE application evident in daily logs and handover notes; zero unrecorded incidents on shifts they lead; safeguarding concerns escalated the same shift they arise; staff wellbeing concerns named and escalated rather than absorbed; and RSW practice improving under their guidance.

Person Specification

Qualifications, Essential

• Level 3 Diploma in Residential Childcare or equivalent, essential
• Safeguarding training to Level 3, essential for this role (funded by Maar Haven if not yet held)
• DDP/PACE awareness training, funded by Maar Haven if not yet held
• Current enhanced DBS with children’s barred list check

Experience, Essential

• Minimum 18 months’ experience in a children’s residential care setting
• Experience of holding key worker relationships with children with complex needs
• Experience of making safeguarding referrals or escalations as a senior practitioner
• Experience of leading a shift or acting-up in a senior capacity, desirable

Values and Mindset

• Understands that residential childcare is skilled, specialist work and approaches it with the professionalism that demands
• Makes the safeguarding call without hesitation, and expects to be supported for doing so
• Actively attends to colleagues’ wellbeing on shift: understands that this is part of the Team Leader role, not someone else’s job
• Holds their own emotional responses when children are dysregulated, and uses that regulation as a co-regulatory tool for both children and staff

What Makes This Role Different

At Maar Haven, the Team Leader has genuine shift leadership authority and genuine safeguarding responsibility. You will be supported by monthly reflective supervision, clinical consultation access, and funded DDP/PACE training. You will work alongside practitioners who take the work as seriously as you do.

The internal pathway from Team Leader to Deputy Manager is deliberate and supported. If you are performing at the level this role demands, the next step will be offered to you.