Children's Senior Social Worker - Family Safeguarding

Children’s Senior Social Worker – Family Safeguarding
£50,142 - £53,282
* per annum (Salaries include market factor where applicable)

Full reimbursement of Social Work England registration fee

Essential Car User Allowance

Do you aspire to work for an ‘Outstanding’ Local Authority?

And can you peel back the layers...?

Children and young people are at the heart of all we do. The qualities that are important to them are:

• Understanding that there are layers to a person, a practitioner's ability to see the person as a 'whole'
• The ability to practice care and kindness
• Being able to really listen to children and young people - what are their views, hopes, aspirations and worries?
• The ability to communicate well

Our family are usually the people closest to us, those we care most about. Family life is not just about legal ties – it goes far deeper than that. It concerns our most important biological, social and emotional relationships. We hold the value that children and young people are best cared for by their birth families and extended networks, and this underpins our ‘family first’ ethos.

Where this cannot be achieved, we seek to ensure that children and young people’s relationships are maintained in line with their best interests. Birth parents and extended networks are included within the decision‑making processes and we provide alternative care which is nurturing and which fosters a sense of belonging.

There has never been a more exciting time to join our service: alongside making a difference to the lives of individuals and families, we have adopted exciting new strengths‑based approaches and are passionate about delivering continuous service improvement.

Here in Telford & Wrekin, we implemented a new approach to Child Protection services developed by Hertfordshire County Council, and began to deliver their innovative and pioneering practice model of Family Safeguarding.

Family Safeguarding is a model of system change where specialist adult practitioners are embedded within Family Safeguarding teams of Social Workers. The intervention supports a whole‑system change to a local authority’s child protection approach for children up to adolescence, focusing on supporting the needs of children and adults in order that children can safely remain within their families.

This involves:

• Establishing multi-disciplinary teams where specialist adult practitioners in domestic abuse, mental health and substance misuse are co‑located with Social Workers under a unified management structure. This enables a multi-disciplinary whole-family response through direct assessment and support from specialist adult practitioners as well as multi-professional group case discussions and sharing of knowledge and skills across disciplines.
• Use of Motivational Interviewing (MI) as a framework for practice for all staff. Staff undergo training and ongoing skills development workshops and follow a structured solution‑focussed intervention programme with families which aims to work collaboratively with families and increase engagement.
• Using an electronic assessment workbook which provides a single data tool for all professionals and links to the work programme. This increases ease of information sharing between professionals and reduces social worker time spent recording and sharing information.

Our brilliant practitioners are at the heart of our ambitious approach to improve outcomes for children and families in Telford and Wrekin: from tailored in‑house training to the West Midlands Teaching Partnership, we ensure that our workforce have access to the best development opportunities.

Here at Telford and Wrekin Council, we have been judged to be outstanding overall in terms of effectiveness (the only Authority in the West Midlands with this judgement) for the second time! Here’s just some of the great things Ofsted had to say when they visited us in April 2024:

• Children and families in Telford and Wrekin continue to experience exceptional social work practice when they are in care and as care leavers.
• Participation is a real strength and children’s and families’ involvement is threaded throughout service developments.
• Social workers know their…