Knowsley Youth Offending Service [YOS] is a skilled and exciting multi-agency team who wish to appoint a qualified Social Worker.

Knowsley YOS offers you the chance to make real changes to children and families lives in a dynamic and creative way. This role offers social workers an opportunity to work in a specialist field whilst being part of a committed, creative and experienced team.  We are a high-quality service that strives to support the complex needs of children, to achieve sustainable outcomes for those children within the criminal justice system.

Within the team there are a wide range of professionals including specialist practitioners in mental health, substance misuse, Police, Probation, Victim intervention and Family intervention. This combined multi- disciplinary team allows Knowsley YOS to function at the highest level. 

As a quality Social Work Case Manager you will be responsible for ensuring the safeguarding of children and families, completing assessments and reports. With the child and family, you will build strength-based plans and interventions to best support them to support their needs and make changes to their lives, in both community and custodial settings. You will also be responsible for managing risk of serious harm, re-offending and the safety and well-being of the child.  You will need to be creative in the way that you work with families, engaging them to build on the positives whilst having a strong understanding of the impact of exploitation, trauma and adverse childhood experiences.

We work under Youth Justice Board Case Management Guidelines including performance measures, local & national standards and Inspectorate frameworks. We ensure we are flexible in meeting the needs of the children and families we work with, focusing on building positive professional working relationships to help facilitate and maintain change. The role will require you to balance Child First methodology with public protection and understand restorative practice and contextual safeguarding.

You will need to have knowledge of current children’s and youth justice legislation. Applicants must also demonstrate experience of working with partner agencies to support vulnerable children and their families, preferably in a statutory setting, to achieve sustainable outcomes for children, families and victims.

A key aspect to the job is being confident in your communication skills and being able to understand your audience, whether that be in a Court setting or to children. You will be required to engage with children in a variety of ways from support to enforcement so the ability to develop positive trusting relationships is essential to affect change.

We support Social Workers in their progression, affording opportunities to grow skill sets. Staff have regular supervision with their line manager, frequent professional development sessions and access to group or specialist supervisions for those complex cases discussions and reflection

Applicants must be qualified, and Social Work England registered at the point of commencement in role, however all applicants must fully evidence how they meet each essential criteria to progress to the interview stage. It is really important that you are aware that applicants will not be selected for interview if they do not meet all required criteria.

For an informal discussion, please contact: Fleur Hann (07717 868242)

For further information about our Children’s Social Services, please visit https://www.knowsleysocialworkacademy.co.uk/

Shortlisting will take place on 7 June 2023

Interviews will take place on 16 June 2023