Advanced Social Worker / Senior Social Worker - Long Term Social Care (Part Time)

Advanced Social Worker / Senior Social Worker - Long Term Social Care (Part Time)

How you'll make a difference

Our social workers make a real difference. Every day they work with families to help children and young people who have had a difficult start in life to achieve their ambitions. For this role, we are actively looking to appoint an experienced worker already operating at, or ready for their progression to Senior Social Worker level.

We welcome you to join a team of Social Workers who make a real difference. You will be listening to young people and putting them at the heart of all that we do and working in partnership with families, equipping them with the skills they need to ensure young people live in happy, healthy and safe homes.

This is a part time position, with preferred working days Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday - however consideration will be given to different arrangements, please advise on your covering statement if you are seeking alternate working arrangements. We are seeking applications from those with relevant experience in this setting, that are at an Advanced Social Worker or Senior Social Worker level; or ready to make the move into this level.

What will you be doing?

• You would be joining an established team of experienced social workers in the Locality Team in Patchway who undertakes statutory social work in the areas of Child protection, Children in Need and the initial stages of Looked after Children, as well as working within the Public Law outline and Care proceedings. You will ensure vulnerable children and young people are identified, protected and supported to achieve positive outcomes through the provision of well planned, integrated and coordinated services


• We have a strong culture of giving staff the time, freedom and support to explore new and better ways of doing things, so we're looking for individuals keen to use their creativity to deliver high quality, child-centred practices, which ensure the best outcomes for children and families.



• The Long Term Social Care team, known as Localities; undertakes statutory social work in the areas of Child protection, Children in Need and the initial stages of Looked after Children, as well as working within the Public Law outline and Care proceedings. You will ensure vulnerable children and young people are identified, protected and supported to achieve positive outcomes through the provision of well planned, integrated and coordinated services., We're a positive, proactive team, with supportive management who listen to ideas, and act on them - fast. Coming out of Covid, we've seen rapidly increasing demand to support children and families with ever more complex needs. We recognised the pressure this was placing on our frontline teams and to ensure we can deliver on our high ambitions for our children and young people, we're making significant new investments in these areas.


• We're expanding our frontline teams. We've created 60 new roles, which will mean consistently lower caseloads for our social workers, so they can deliver genuinely child-centred support.


• We're making it easier for staff to work flexibly, enabling them to work how and where they need to, to do their jobs as well as they can.


• We're strengthening our reward offer to recognise the fantastic job our staff do.


• We're adopting clinical supervision to support staff because we recognise that our work can be tough emotionally. It builds on our training offer, helping staff to develop critical thinking skills and support their work with families.


• We're building early intervention partnership capacity because we know we can achieve better results for families if we get multi-agency working right.


• We're increasing what we spend on evidence-based specialist expertise and capabilities, including specialist trauma support and an in-house psychologist to support families.


• We're introducing new initiatives like the Mockingbird extended family model in fostering, a Caring Dads scheme and a new approach to domestic abuse.


• We're enhancing an already exceptional training and development offer. A new systemic practice academy will drive our focus on relationship based social work.


• Finally, it might be boring, but we're investing in our systems and processes, because we want them to help us, rather than hold us back in our work.


These investments demonstrate our absolute focus on providing an excellent, family-centred service.

We keep workloads manageable, we welcome flexible working and we're recognised for the opportunities we provide for career development, training and secondment. It's not the managers who say this - it's our colleagues.

Right now, we're looking for talented, ambitious social workers to join us across our adult and children's services.

Our commitments to you

- Unmatched training, development and secondment opportunities
- A proactive team with supportive management
- Commitment to excellence
- Realistic caseloads
- Flexible working opportunities
- A comprehensive Assessed and Supported Year in Employment (ASYE) programme

South Gloucestershire offers a rich mix of stunning countryside and urban culture. At the same time, due to our being near to the M4, M5 and M32, it's an easy commute from Bristol, Bath, Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Oxfordshire, Somerset and, with the bridge charges recently abolished, south Wales.


• A qualified social worker with relevant registration to practice and a good understanding of asset and strengths based approaches to social work - or award pending if requiring an ASYE.


• A problem solver, confident about making important decisions, underpinned by a genuine passion to work collaboratively with children, young people and families to meet their goals and aspirations


• Innovation, positivity and dedication. You'll welcome challenge and embrace change.


• Social Workers with experience in other areas of Social Work are invited to apply as their skills are transferable and you would be offered ongoing support as part of your career development.


• The proven ability to provide mentoring support to lesser experienced colleagues; and experience deputise in the absence of the Team Manager.


• You will have the experience to enable you to hold more complex cases, such as court cases and higher end child protection.
  
  At South Gloucestershire Council, we'll support you at every moment.
  
  These posts attract a gross lump sum £3,000 'recruitment payment' pro rata offered to enable Social Workers who have already successfully completed their ASYE to join our permanent workforce. This is payable upon successful completion of your probationary period (after approximately 3-6 months) and is subject to eligibility criteria. These posts are also eligible for the annual £3,000 'retention payment' pro rata, payable in November annually to those with two years' service with the council in Integrated Children's Services In an eligible post, inclusive of any ASYE period.


We also provide up to £8,000 relocation package, flexible working and a suite of employee benefits

We know our team work best when they have balance in their lives and we offer genuine flexibility to help them achieve that work/life balance.

We recognise that our diverse team of skilled and dedicated people make us a great place to work. We welcome applications from everyone and ensure that individuals are selected, promoted and developed on the basis of their merits and abilities.

Advertised salary is full time equivalent, salary will be pro rata to hours worked.