Experienced Social Worker
Experienced Social Worker
Ready to take the next step in your social work career?
If you’re an experienced children’s social worker looking for a role where your professional judgement is valued, your development is invested in and your practice can genuinely influence the lives of children and families, we’d love to hear from you.
At Cheshire East, we’re doing things differently.
We’re continuing to develop our Children’s Family Help and Social Care service around relationships, strengths, family networks and restorative practice. Our ambition is simple: to work alongside children and families in a way that builds trust, creates meaningful change and keeps children safe and thriving within their families and communities wherever it is safe to do so.
Our Families First approach supports this ambition by bringing earlier, more coordinated help around families and strengthening the way professionals work together. For social workers, this means having greater opportunity to build relationships, understand what matters to families and work creatively to achieve sustainable change.
This is a great time to join us.
Why Cheshire East?
We know that experienced social workers have choices about where they work. So, if you’re considering your next move, we want to be clear about what you can expect from us.
A practice model that puts relationships at the heart of social work.
Restorative Practice is our practice model. We are investing in training and embedding restorative approaches across Children’s Services so that the way we work with children, families and colleagues is consistent with the values of relationship, collaboration, accountability and meaningful change. You won’t simply be told about a practice model when you join – you’ll be supported to understand it, use it and develop your practice through it.
Families First – working with families, not doing things to families
Our Families First approach is strengthening the way we provide support to children, young people and families, with a focus on earlier intervention, partnership working and preventing needs from escalating wherever possible. For social workers, this creates opportunities to work more creatively with families and their networks, build on strengths and bring the right people around the child and family at the right time.
We want families to experience professionals as people who work alongside them, listen to them and help them find sustainable solutions.
Your experience matters
As an Experienced Social Worker, you will be trusted to bring your professional expertise to complex work. You will have opportunities to influence practice, support colleagues, contribute to service development and share your experience across the team. We want experienced social workers who are curious, reflective and confident enough to ask, “what could we do differently?” as well as “what do we need to do?”
This is a role for practitioners who want to make a difference to practice as well as to individual children and families.
Investment in you
We want you to continue to grow as a social worker.
You’ll have access to a range of training, development and reflective learning opportunities, alongside regular supervision and support from experienced leaders and practitioners.
We are investing in our workforce because we know that good social work happens when practitioners have the skills, confidence, support and space to think well about their practice.
Whether your ambition is to deepen your practice expertise, develop as a practice educator, move towards leadership or simply become the very best social worker you can be, we want to support your next step.
About the role
You will work with children and families where needs are complex and may involve significant safeguarding concerns. Your role will include:
- Managing complex and high-risk cases across Child in Need, Child Protection and Cared for Children.
- Undertaking high-quality, analytical assessments and developing plans that are focussed on outcomes.
- Leading safeguarding interventions and contributing to effective multi-agency planning and decision-making.
- Building purposeful relationships with children, young people and their families, ensuring their voice, wishes and lived experience inform your practice.
- Working restoratively with families, colleagues and partner agencies to create meaningful and sustainable change.
- Identifying and building on family strengths, networks and resources wherever this is safe and appropriate.
- Attending strategy meetings, child protection conferences, legal planning meetings and court proceedings as required.
- Developing creative solutions with families rather than relying solely on traditional approaches.
- Supporting less experienced social workers through mentoring, modelling good practice and sharing your expertise.
- Contributing to reflective practice, learning and continuous improvement across the service.
- Taking an active role in developing our practice culture and helping us shape the future of Children’s Social Care in Cheshire East.
We are currently recruiting across several areas, including Child in Need/Child Protection, Children with Disabilities and Cared for Children.
Each team offers a different experience, but all share our commitment to relationship-based, strengths-focused and restorative social work.
This is just a snapshot of the role. For the full responsibilities, please see the attached job description.
About you
You’ll be a qualified Social Worker registered with Social Work England, with a minimum of three years’ post-qualifying experience in children’s social work.
More importantly, you’ll be someone who:
- Is confident managing complex statutory social work and safeguarding practice and have substantial experience in this.
- Can analyse risk, make sound professional decisions and articulate your thinking using evidence-based practice.
- Builds purposeful relationships with children, young people and families, including when conversations are difficult.
- Is curious about what sits behind presenting behaviours and circumstances.
- Believes families should be active participants in decisions about their lives.
- Can balance strengths-based and restorative practice with the professional authority required to safeguard children.
- Is comfortable working collaboratively across agencies and professional boundaries.
- Is reflective, open to challenge and committed to continuous learning.
- Wants to contribute to a positive culture where social workers can do their best work.
What you can expect from us
We know that social work is challenging. That's why we want you to have the support around you to do it well. When you join Cheshire East, you can expect:
- A clear practice model – restorative practice is at the heart of how we are developing our social work.
- Investment in learning – access to training, practice development, reflective learning and opportunities to develop your expertise.
- Supportive supervision – space to think, reflect and be challenged constructively.
- A culture of high support and high challenge – we want you to feel supported while being trusted to practise with professional accountability.
- Opportunities to influence change – experienced practitioners can contribute to service development and the continued improvement of Children’s Services.
- Career development – opportunities to develop as an Advanced Practitioner, Practice Educator, mentor or future leader.
- A relationship-based culture – we want strong relationships with children and families and with each other.
- The opportunity to be part of something that is changing – this is an exciting time to join Cheshire East as we continue to strengthen our services and embed new ways of working.
Join us
You may be looking for a new challenge. You may want to develop your practice. Or perhaps you simply want to work somewhere that gives you the opportunity to spend more time doing the social work that brought you into the profession in the first place.
Whatever your reason, Cheshire East could be your next move.
Come and join us as we continue to build a Children’s Social Care service where relationships matter, families are partners, practitioners are supported and children are at the centre of everything we do.
Bring your experience. Bring your ideas. Help us shape what good social work looks like in Cheshire East.
We’d love to hear from you.
What we offer in return:
- A competitive salary - Between £43,149 per annum - £49,658 per annum (CEC NJC – Grade 10) with guaranteed yearly pay increases!
- Enhanced annual leave - Start with an impressive 34 days of annual leave (including bank holidays) from day one, and watch it grow to 39 days after just five years of service
- Purchase of annual leave – Want more time off? You can purchase up to 10 extra days of annual leave each year, giving you the flexibility to balance work and life just the way you want (Pro-rata for part-time staff)
- Flexible working pattern - Enjoy a 37-hour standard full-time work week with the added perks of flexitime.
- Salary sacrifice green car scheme - Drive green and save green! Lease a brand-new electric or hybrid car through our salary sacrifice scheme. There’re no credit checks, no deposits, just significant savings and exclusive offers on a three-year lease
- White goods salary sacrifice scheme - Upgrade your home with ease. Purchase home and electronic items through our salary sacrifice scheme, spreading the cost of big-ticket purchases like appliances, computers, and tech gadgets directly from your salary
- Enhanced public pension - Secure your future with our career average pension, where contributions are built at a rate of 1/49th of your yearly pensionable pay
- Cycle to work scheme - Save up to 25-39% on the retail price of bikes and safety equipment through Income Tax and National Insurance savings. Get fit and save money!
- Employee assistance programme - Access a completely free and confidential assistance service to help manage, reduce, and overcome life’s challenges, both at work and in your personal life
- Discounted gym membership - Stay active and healthy with corporate membership prices for Everybody Leisure, including:
- Gym, Swim and Group Fitness at all 16 facilities
- Off-Peak Racket Sports
- Athletics Tracks
- Sauna/Steam/Spa
How to apply
As an equal opportunities’ employer, we warmly welcome applicants from all backgrounds. We believe that a diverse workforce helps us better reflect and serve our local communities, and together, we can build something truly special.
To join our team, simply click ‘Apply for this job’ at the bottom of the page. If you’d prefer an informal chat first or have any questions about the role, feel free to reach out to Stephen.Pepper@cheshireeast.gov.ukorJanet.Bullock@cheshireeast.gov.uk.
Please remember to include the job reference so we know which role you are interested in.
When applying for this role, if you have a specific team or area of interest, please include this within your application.
Once you’ve applied for the position, please keep an eye on your email inbox (including your junk and spam folders), as we’ll send any correspondence there to stay in touch with updates about your application.
If you haven’t heard from us within four weeks of the closing date, it likely means we weren’t able to move forward with your application at this time but please don’t let this discourage you as your interest means a lot to us, and we’d truly love to hear from you again in the future!
We wish you all the best in your application and if you run into any technical issues, our friendly team are here to help at: childrenssocialcarerecruitment@cheshireeast.gov.uk.
Cheshire East Council is committed to safeguarding children and vulnerable adults across the Borough. As such, any cautions, convictions, reprimands or final warnings that are ‘not protected’ as defined by the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) order 1975 (as amended in 2013) relating to the non-disclosure of spent convictions do not apply to this job. You must therefore, disclose whether you have any previous convictions where prompted to do so within the application process.
Attachments
Salary range
- £43,149 - £49,658 per year