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Job Introduction

Our Social Workers make a huge difference to the lives of people across our county, and we remain passionate about investing in retaining our own and developing practice and this an exciting opportunity which offers just that.

If you are looking for more responsibility, a supportive role with your colleagues whilst continuing to support and safeguard some of our most vulnerable/high risk children and young people, then this could be just for you.

We are looking for qualified social workers with post qualifying experience of working with vulnerable children and knowledge of safeguarding and children in care.

A career progression framework is in place to support you which also includes:

• Practice Educator Programme.
• Aspiring Senior Practice Lead and Aspiring Team Manager programmes.
• We are ambitious in our learning and development programme with strong links within the West Midlands and our teaching partnership.

To see more on this visit : Children & Families - Careers at Staffordshire

You will be based Newcastle Under Lyme

Main Responsibilities

As an Advanced Social Worker at Newcastle Under Lyme, Staffordshire, you’ll be key in the support and coaching you’ll help us to provide to our Social Workers. You’ll encourage and ensure that there’s a focus upon quality of practice but also on achieving positive outcomes for children and families.

As an Advanced Social Worker in the Assessment & Staying Together teams you’ll:

• Manage a complex allocation of children
• Share in day-to-day care management tasks with the team manager, promoting a restorative approach to working with children and families, making decisions and providing advice and guidance to social workers with regard to child in need, Child Protection and Child in Care and Care Proceedings, in consultation with the manager, and chairing of strategy meetings, complex Child in Need and Core Group meetings.
• Coordinate and facilitate team group supervision
• Promote effective multi agency service delivery, and restorative practice with partner agencies.
• Ensure the team work towards achieving key service delivery objectives to ensure satisfactory team performance against key performance indicators.
• Mentor Social Work colleagues through assistance with complex cases including Care Proceedings work to support the professional development of newly qualified social workers
• Be responsible for the provision of practice placements for students and support social workers undertaking the practice assessment and workload management of social work students in the team
• Provide professional supervision to unqualified staff (including students and sessional workers) including identifying training needs.
• Lead on or contribute to projects as directed by the team manager

The Ideal Candidate

More generally, overall, our Advanced Social Workers need to be a:

• Qualified Social Worker with post qualifying experience
• Registered with Social Work England
• Have a current UK driving licence and access to a vehicle

But above all, you’ll bring the desire to work with children and families to give them the right support, at the right time with the aim of keeping families together where it’s safe to do so.

For more information about this vacancy or for an informal chat please contact kayleigh.harold@staffordshire.gov.uk

Interviews will be held week commencing 17th August

Our Recruitment Process: We anonymise applications during shortlisting to ensure only relevant information is considered. Please complete your application fully, especially the supporting statement, to highlight what you’ll bring to the role. Please note: The minimum essential criteria in the ideal candidate section detailed above will be used if you are applying under one of our Interview Guarantee Schemes detailed below.

About Staffordshire County Council

We are no ordinary county council:

Our Values:

The core of who we are as an organisation. Just like we all have personal values that shape our thoughts and behaviour, organisational values drive how we think and act collectively.

Our values were created and shaped by colleague feedback and national best practice and they sit at the heart of People Strategy:

We have a real sense of community spirit that brings our people together. This feeling of belonging means we are all connected to what we do and take pride in the difference we make every day for Staffordshire people. We are ambitious and our sights are set firmly on a better future.

We look forward and race ahead - that goes for your career too.

Our benefits:

We recognise that it is our employees that are central to everything we do. We aim to create a supportive working environment where employees can achieve their full potential and achieve a healthy work-life balance.

In addition to your salary, as a member of staff, you will have access to Our rewards and benefits - Careers at Staffordshire

Our recruitment process:

As an Authority we are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people/vulnerable adults and expect all staff and volunteers to share this commitment.

Staffordshire County Council is an equal opportunities organisation and Disability Confident employer. We encourage applications from all background and communities

As part of our commitment as a Disability Confident employer, a Gold Award Armed Forces employer and our commitment to supporting care leavers - we offer a guaranteed interview as long as your application meets the minimum criteria for the post.

As you’ll know safeguarding and promoting the welfare of our children and young people/vulnerable adults is important to us and that’s why this position is subject to a criminal record check from the Disclosure and Barring Service. If applicable you should disclose details of unspent and unfiltered spent reprimands, formal warnings, cautions and convictions in your application form.