Advanced Children's Social Worker

Overview

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 have some exciting new opportunities for experienced social workers available with us across East Staffordshire. We are looking for qualified social workers with post qualifying experience to work in the fast paced duty team. There is a very supportive and friendly culture within the district.

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.

For more information on working in at Staffordshire and our social worker career pathway, please visit Children & Families - Careers at Staffordshire

This role will be based in the Children in Care Team in East Staffordshire.

As an Advanced Social Worker in the Children in Care team you’ll :

• be key in the support and coaching you’ll help us to provide to our Social Workers.
• encourage and ensure that there’s a focus upon quality of practice but also on achieving positive outcomes for children and families.
• 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 Children in Care and Care Proceedings, in consultation with the manager.
• 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.
• Work in partnership with the Team Manager to ensure the team works towards achieving key service delivery objectives and achieves to a high standard in terms of performance.

You'll be:

• Qualified Social Worker with post qualifying experience
• Registered with Social Work England
• Have a current UK driving licence and vehicle
• Have extensive experience in managing children in our care and care leavers
• Be able to navigate childcare proceedings, be considerate to reunification assessments, Placement with Parents, Special Guardianship Orders and discharge of Care Orders and a thorough understanding of permanency care planning.
• Have skills in managing foster home breakdowns, alternative provisions, the LADO process and where possible be ABE trained.
• Have skills in progressing educational plans through Personal Education Planning and Educational health care annual reviews.

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.

“We’re happy to talk flexible working”

Don’t feel you meet all the requirements? We value transferable skills, experiences, and qualifications so consider applying anyway or for an informal chat. Please contact Heidi Cranidge at

Interview date to be confirmed

Our Recruitment Process: We anonymise applications during…