Childrens Senior Social Worker #00087D3E1

Job Description

The following is essential criteria, please do not apply without:

– Degree in Social Work

– SWE Registration

– Right to work within the UK

Stockport Family is looking for experienced and dynamic children’s social workers, who are looking for a role in a relational and systemic local authority, which has recently maintained its rating of Good in its Ofsted inspection of May 2022.

As a local authority, Stockport offers a supportive and vibrant working environment – our teams are dedicated to delivering the very best outcomes for our children and families and we work together with our multi-agency partners in a positive and upbeat way.

We work in a different way to lots of our neighbours – we have a model of working with children and their families from the point of referral through to closure or permanence. This allows our social workers to build long-lasting and strong relationships with children and their families and gives our social workers a real range of working experience – in Stockport, no two days are ever the same! We have lots of support services; an in-house Families First team, an ISW team and an Emotional Health and Wellbeing Team which provide formulations and interventions to our children and young people. We are also a trailblazer participant in the Family Drug and Alcohol Courts in the North West and have a complex safeguarding team which focuses not only on exploitation for young people but also on high risk domestic abuse cases.

We are a ‘human first, professional second’ local authority – we pride ourselves on the relationships which we have with our families and which we have with each other. We currently enjoy a relatively stable workforce; most of our team leaders started their careers in Stockport as ASYEs and most of our senior management team have all had experience of working in Stockport as social workers – we are committed to developing and nurturing our social workers and our offer to our agency workers is exactly the same. We have an extensive workforce development programme – which offers an introduction to restorative practice, training around working with SEND needs and regular protected time to complete CPD. This offer is open to our agency social workers as well as our permanent staff and we are pleased to offer our agency workers a yearly professional development review (PDR).

Some of our recently employed agency workers have chosen to join us on a permanent basis which we feel reflects the strength of our welcome to our agency workers.

The role:

We are keen to recruit agency social workers with experience of statutory social work with children and families. Contracts can be offered in the initial period for up to 6 months, to provide candidates with stability and security in the role.

We want to make sure that we are responsive to our agency workers’ needs. Our model of working from referral to permanence or closure means that we have the ability to cater caseloads to our agency workers’ interests – on the whole, we offer our agency workers a caseload of Child Protection and Child in Need but can discuss allocating court cases or cared for children, where this is in the interests of our agency staff.

We are centrally based in town hall district of Stockport – all of social work teams are co-located with our health, police, Early Help and MASSH colleagues and currently we have some vacancies across our borough. Our average caseload is ***; whilst there are some fluctuations across teams, we are dedicated as an authority to ensuring a manageable caseload for our social workers and we review this regularly.

We ensure a strong induction for our agency workers, with a gradual increase in caseload and complexity of work. Alongside this, we offer high quality reflective supervision on a monthly basis – all of our team leaders are trained in reflective and systemic supervision. There are opportunities for group and reflective supervision delivered by senior practitioners and our workforce development team and there are opportunities to seek specialist advice and consultation from our Aspire service about domestic abuse and complex safeguarding.

Each team has 1 team leader, 2 senior practitioners and 6 social workers. The teams are focussed on small geographical areas across Stockport and have link relationships with local schools, health professionals and borough-wide services through our Team around the School model. Our team leaders and senior practitioners are well-established and know Stockport really well and have really good relationships with our senior management team.

In terms of working patterns, as a local authority, we recognise that flexibility for our workforce is key. Our social workers tell us that they appreciate time spent together as a team but also that they enjoy the option of working from home as well. We have modern technology to support this and we are happy to discuss and consider requests for flexible or reduced hours, to suit individual candidates’ needs.

We are open to questions from and conversations with prospective candidates and look forward to welcoming you into our family!

Please be aware this is a Long Term Temporary post to start ASAP.

What’s on offer for the Social Worker

· Excellent competitive pay rate – paid weekly!

· Excellent management structure with experienced leaders

· Desirable location with excellent transport links

· A stable and well-supported working environment

You must have:

• A professional qualification in social work and experience of working with Children's
• Social Work England registration.
• Post qualified experience.
• Enhanced DBS/Update service.
• References required for the last 5 years of employment.

Benefits of working with Semester.co.uk:

• Free on-going training opportunities upon registering as part of our commitment to you.
• Competitive Rates of pay
• In house payroll, providing weekly payments and support
• Enhanced DBS completed.
• Support and expert advice from an approachable, dedicated and friendly team
• An assigned dedicated & experienced consultant
• Various employment opportunities in your preferred geographical area

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