Advanced Practitioner – Children's Social Care

Team: Quality Assurance Service
Base: County Hall, Exeter

This is a fantastic opportunity for an experienced and skilled practitioner to join our Quality Assurance Team and help to shape and drive forward the continuous service performance and improvement culture through the organisation.

The Quality Assurance Reviewing & Safeguarding Service (QARSS) plays a crucial role in upholding high standards across safeguarding practices within the county. The service offers dedicated support and guidance to colleagues, promoting continuous improvement that aligns with strategic goals.

At QARSS, we are committed to ensuring that children, their families, and partner agencies actively shape the planning process. We encourage meaningful engagement through child-focused conferences and reviews, and we gather valuable insights via the Single Feedback Form to strengthen our approach.

Within our QA Team, we oversee the organisation-wide monthly audit cycle, ensuring consistent moderation across all service areas. We take pride in delivering high-quality oversight, supporting auditors in developing their skills, conducting rapid reviews, and driving practice improvement through targeted feedback and collaboration with the academy.

About the role

Working within the Quality Assurance Team, you will play a key role in driving practice improvement across Children's Services. You will support the service-wide quality assurance cycle through the moderation of audits, providing constructive feedback to teams and managers, and identifying areas of good practice and opportunities for development.

The role includes undertaking dip sampling activities, contributing to thematic audits and reviews, and producing analysis and reports that inform service improvement. You will support learning reviews through audit activity, chronology compilation, and the identification of key learning themes.

You will champion high standards of professional social work practice by creating and supporting opportunities for reflection, learning and professional curiosity. Using a restorative approach, you will share and present the findings of thematic audits and quality assurance activity, supporting practitioners, managers and services to strengthen practice and improve outcomes for children and families.

Working collaboratively with the Social Work Academy, you will help close the learning loop by making recommendations that inform policy, practice guidance, workforce development and service improvement. You will also contribute to evaluating the impact of learning, development activity and implemented recommendations, supporting Devon's continued journey of growth, learning and improvement.

This role offers an opportunity to influence practice at both an individual and service level, ensuring that quality assurance activity leads to meaningful and sustained improvement for children and families.

We offer a flexible hybrid working model. While daily office attendance is not required, post holders will be expected to attend the office regularly, as well as in-person training events, conferences and team meetings, to support effective collaboration, learning and service delivery.

For an informal discussion about this role, please contact Ellen Collins – ellen.collins@devon.gov.uk

About you

Our Advanced Social Work Practitioners provide a lead social work role, supporting the development of good evidence-based practice. With substantial post-qualifying experience and the ability to demonstrate that you’re working in line with the BASW PCF framework, you will:

• Have substantial post-qualifying social work experience, supported by ongoing professional development and a strong understanding of legislation, safeguarding, social work standards and best practice.
• Demonstrate knowledge and experience across children's social care services, enabling you to provide informed challenge, analysis and support for practice improvement.
• Be able to lead improvement and challenge the quality of social care practice in a constructive and restorative manner.
• Demonstrate the ability to analyse information from a range of sources, identify themes and patterns, and make evidence-informed recommendations for service improvement.
• Encourage and support opportunities for reflection and learning, delivering on-the-job training, coaching, and mentoring to colleagues.
• Build effective working relationships with practitioners, managers and partners to support learning, improvement and organisational development.

Bring your skills and passion to our team and join us as an Advanced Social Work Practitioner in our Safeguarding, Quality Assurance, Performance and Partnerships service.

What we can offer you

There are many benefits to joining Devon County Council and in exchange for your dedication, skills and experience we can offer a number of employee benefits including:

• Generous annual leave, and the ability to purchase additional annual leave.
• Free onsite parking
• Flexible working opportunities and promotion of a healthy work-life balance, including working from home where possible – Please visit Happy to Talk Flexible Working for more information
• Employee Assistance for the times you may need some support and a variety of employee well-being services
• Membership of the Local Government Pension Scheme
• Discounts at over 900 national & local high street retailers through our benefits platform
• Cycle to work scheme
• Electric Vehicle salary sacrifice scheme

Relocation Package

For anyone thinking of relocating to Devon, we offer a generous relocation allowance (subject to qualifying conditions), so there has never been better time to make the move!

For more information about living and working in Devon please visit our Working for Devon page.

Applications close on 25 October 2026 and shortlisted applicants will be contacted to arrange interview dates promptly.

Please Note: At this time, we are only accepting applications from candidates who are currently residing in the UK and are unable to consider overseas applications.

Internal Applicants, please note: If you are an existing DCC employee, please use your iTrent Employee Self Service (ESS) details to log in and apply.

Additional Information

• This role requires a DBS disclosure
• This role requires the ability to fulfil all spoken aspects of the role with confidence and fluency in English
• DCC embraces the positive benefits of a diverse workforce and is committed to providing an environment that is inclusive and safe. We welcome applications from people who share our commitment to stop discrimination, challenge inequality and promote diversity across Devon. More information can be found on our Equality and Diversity webpages
• We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and vulnerable adults and expect all staff and volunteers to share this commitment
• Personal data we collect from you will be processed in accordance with the Applicant privacy notice

REQ010643– Children’s Social Care