Practice Assurance & Development Lead

Posting date:	05 March 2026
Salary:	Not specified
Additional salary information:	Competitive
Hours:	Full time
Closing date:	04 April 2026
Location:	Bolton, BL2 2JW
Company:	inploi
Job type:	Permanent
Job reference:	75791121

Summary

Grade: K scp 39 £ 50,269 to scp 43 £ 54,495 plus essential car user allowance.
Contract: Permanent 37hrs per week
Role specifics: Must have a Social Work Qualification and be registered with Social Work England, hold a full UK driving licence.

Unfortunately, we are unable to offer sponsorship for this role.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)
We embrace AI to enhance our operations and to innovate our services. However, we value human talent and are looking for passionate individuals to join our organisation. Please ensure you personally complete your application and read all the instructions carefully to maximise your chances of success.

Applications that rely too heavily on AI may be rejected during shortlisting, however we understand that AI may be used as a reasonable adjustment, if using AI to support your application, please give a brief explanation why to help ensure fair selection process.

If you have completed the GM Elevate (Leadership Development) Programme, please indicate this within the ‘About You’ or ‘Supporting Statement’ section of your application

Ask us about flexible working options to fit with your work/life balance - #HappytoTalkFlexible

The Role
We are looking for a Practice Assurance and Development Lead to join our Adult Social Care Practice Team, working directly to the Principal Social Worker. This role sits at the heart of our threepillar model for practice excellence: Practice Assurance, Practice Development, and Workforce Development.

You will contribute across all three pillars, helping us understand, strengthen and support practice across Adult Social Care. From undertaking qualitative assurance and translating learning, to developing practice tools and delivering learning, to shaping how we support, induct and grow our workforce you will have a direct impact on practice quality and the lived experience of adults and carers in Bolton.

You will be primarily based at Castle Hill, but visibility across the service is essential. You will spend time in different teams, building strong relationships with practitioners and managers, supporting learning and improvement where practice happens, and helping shape a confident, reflective and outcomesfocused workforce.

About the Team:
Bolton Adult Social Care has recently been rated ‘Good’ by the CQC, reflecting the dedication of our workforce, our strengthsbased practice culture, and our commitment to continuous improvement. We are proud of this outcome and equally committed to building on it.

Our Practice Team is central to that ambition. We bring together three connected areas of work that support and improve practice across the service:

Practice Assurance
We develop and deliver qualitative assurance activity. Audits, thematic reviews, lived experience insight and reflective learning; to understand the quality and impact of practice. We identify strengths, risks and opportunities for improvement, feeding directly into leadership discussions and service development.

Practice Development
We translate what we learn into practical, accessible improvements: practice tools, guidance, workshops, learning circles, reflective sessions and targeted development activity. Our aim is to help practitioners feel confident, supported and able to deliver consistently good outcomes.

Workforce Development
We support the whole workforce journey; from induction and capability building, to progression, ASYE, continuous professional development and future career pathways. We ensure learning is aligned with the Practice Framework and recording expectations, and that staff have the skills and confidence they need to thrive.

These three pillars are connected, proactive and deliberately aligned. Ensuring learning flows from lived experience and assurance into practice development and workforce planning.

About You
We are looking for someone who is:

Creative, dynamic and a systems thinker, with the ability to see patterns and connections across practice, workforce and outcomes.
Passionate about supporting staff, enabling them to provide high quality, strengths based support to adults and carers.
Skilled in working with qualitative insight, lived experience feedback and assurance findings to identify themes and improvement opportunities.
Able to build strong, trusting relationships, influence respectfully and provide constructive challenge.
Confident in designing and delivering practice learning, from reflective spaces to facilitated workshops.
Deeply committed to strengths based practice, inclusion, co production and continual improvement.
Comfortable working independently, balancing competing priorities and using professional judgement.

This role is ideal for someone who enjoys working with people, shaping culture, and supporting improvement across a whole system.

Working Arrangements

This post is based at Castle Hill, with an expectation that you will:Work across multiple team locations to maintain strong relationships, visibility and connection. Be present and engaged with practice: this is a relationship centred, improvement focused role and cannot be effectively delivered in isolation.
Use hybrid working appropriately: up to two non consecutive days from home per week.
Benefit from flexi time, while still meeting the needs of a responsive and people focused role

We support flexibility, but the impact of this role comes from connection, collaboration and time spent alongside practitioners.

About Us
This is your opportunity to join us at an exciting time as we have strong ambitions for the borough.

Bolton is a great place to work. We are a welcoming organisation that wants to contribute to a place where people feel active, connected and prosperous. We are passionate about improving the outcomes and experience of Bolton people. We want Bolton to be a vibrant place built on strong cohesive communities, successful businesses and healthy, engaged residents.

As an employer we want to thank our employees for their hard work and commitment, by giving them the opportunity to access a range of exclusive rewards and benefits, including discounts and exclusive gym membership prices and salary sacrifice schemes. In addition, we offer a generous annual leave allowance, flexible work opportunities, access to a Pension Scheme, as well as a range of employee wellbeing and support services.

Our Values are really important to us, read all about them below, along with all our great staff benefits, the job description/person specification for the role and the important legal bits, and our Top Tips too.

Ready to apply? Then please click Apply and upload your anonymised CV and supporting statement discussing your relevant skills and experience then explain how you believe they make you a strong fit for this role.

Within Greater Manchester, local authorities have made a commitment to improve the employment opportunities for people with disabilities, care leavers, carers, and ex-military personnel. Please see greater.jobs for further information before you apply.

We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of vulnerable adults and young people and expect all staff and volunteers to share this commitment.

DBS (Disclosure and Barring Service) clearance - this post is covered by the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (amended in 2013). Employment offers are conditional subject to satisfactory clearances. For roles where a criminal records check from the DBS is required, this includes satisfactory clearance of this check. The possession of a criminal record will not necessarily bar an individual from working with us. This will depend on the nature of the position and the circumstances and background of an individual’s offence/s. Information provided by you or the DBS will be dealt with in a confidential manner and in accordance with the DBS Code of Practice which can be viewed here. Bolton Council’s policy on the Employment of Ex-Offenders is available here.
This post is a designated customer facing role under the fluency duty and requires a specified level of spoken English as per the person specification.

This organisation has signed up to the Greater Manchester Continuous Service Commitment. That means we will recognise your continuous or ‘unbroken’ service in any Greater Manchester local authority or NHS organisation that has signed the commitment, Transport for Greater Manchester, Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service or Greater Manchester Combined Authority, giving you access to our service-related benefits. Please see the home page of greater.jobs for more information.

For more information about working for Bolton Council, please see greater.jobs; for advice and support with your application, contact recruitment@bolton.gov.uk

Supporting Documents

↗ Documents for Right to Work
↗ Documents for DBS
↗ Privacy Notice
↗ Our Values & Behaviours
↗ Staff Benefits
↗ Top Tips
↗ Job Description & Person Specification

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