Senior Practitioner-Team Child

Organisation: Leicestershire County Council

Work Location: County Hall, Room 600, Glenfield, Leicestershire LE3 8RS

Worker Category: Hybrid Worker- working at home/in the community and within the office

Salary: £50,079per annum (inclusive of market premia at £2,250) (pro rata for part time)

Working Hours:22.5 hours Monday-Wednesday (can be flexible with days)

Contract Type: Permanent

Closing Date: 4 February 2026

Interview Date(s): 24 March 2026

Are you passionate about working with foster carers and helping to improve the outcomes for our children in care?

Are you interested in supporting the well-being of foster carers and their children?

Do you want to work within a busy and supportive team which is committed to ensuring that our children in care receive a high standard of care and our foster carers feel well supported and have the necessary skills to care for children?

If so, this role is for you!

We are looking to recruit a senior practitioner supervising social worker to join our busy team which focusses on supporting mainstream foster carers to care for our looked after children. You must be passionate about working directly with foster carers to ensure that they have the necessary skills to care for children that have experienced trauma and you must have a keen interest in working with the whole fostering household including birth children.

We encourage all of our foster carers to work in a trauma informed and therapeutic manner so you need to be able to support not only your own learning but also the foster carers to ensure that these principles are applied within the foster home.

As a supervising social worker you will be responsible for the fostering household, ensuring that the statutory regulations and requirements are met. It will be within your role to provide regular supervision to foster carers, undertake annual reviews and work collaboratively with other professionals both within and external to the council. In addition, you will work within the fostering duty team to ensure that children are matched to suitable foster homes with carers that have the skills to meet their needs.

There will be an expectation that you attend weekly duty meetings and work on duty as required.

In addition, you will be expected to support the team manager in managing the operational aspects of the team such as chairing meetings, supervising support workers, facilitating skills to foster training and being the lead worker for our children who foster scheme in addition to other tasks.

As a team we hold a number of events throughout the year and it will be part of your role to help to arrange and facilitate these, some of which are outside of the normal office hours.

The role is 22.5 hours per week working Monday
- Wednesday (can be flexible with days) and there is 1 permanent post available.

A DBS enhanced check for a regulated activity is required for this post.

For information on our approach to the recruitment of ex-offenders, please see our policy statement.

To apply for this post, you must respond to and evidence the following 7 essential criteria within your personal statement.

• Have a Social Work degree or equivalent, e.g. CQSW, DipSW (with specialism in children’s services) with evidence of continuing professional development (ASYE pass as a minimum).
• Post-qualification experience of working with children and families and experience of statutory childcare social work, including safeguarding, child protection and care proceedings.
• Have experience of working with service users from ethnic minorities and those who have a protected characteristic.
• Demonstrate your continuing professional development, including self-development.
• Experience of working within a fostering service/with foster carers and Children in Care alongside a working knowledge of Fostering Regulations and National Minimum Standards
• The ability to communicate clearly and accurately, both orally and in writing, with a wide range of people, including representatives from other agencies, using skills of negotiation and persuasion. In addition you must have the ability to prioritise effectively across a wide range of competing…