Advanced Social Worker

Job Introduction

Our Children in Care and Care Leavers Team in Tamworth, Staffordshire works with children between 0 and 18 years and support their families to make positive changes to be able to care for their children safely once again if this can be achieved.

We also support those children for whom this is not a safe option and seek to progress other permanency options though special guardianship, kinship care and long term fostering. We help and support our children to develop key life skills, to get services around them to help them cope with life, learn and achieve in school, nursery and community groups, develop key life skills that will support them in adulthood, ensure all their health needs are met and that they have a safe secure home with carers that can support their development.

For those who remain in our care until they are 18 years old we look to support and plan how they will manage and cope with adulthood. Putting plans in place to support their independence with the support of their Personal Advisor, making sure they have the services they can access around them so they are able to keep themselves safe and contribute to their community.

You will be key in the support and coaching we provide to our Social Workers. You will encourage and ensure that there is a focus upon quality of practice but also on achieving positive and timely outcomes for children and families.

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.

You will working between our Tamworth and Lichfield offices.

Main Responsibilities

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.

The Ideal Candidate

You'll be a:

• Qualified Social Worker with significant post qualifying experience which would include having worked within a children's social work team
• Experience of working in a trauma informed way with children and young people
• Experience of direct work with children
• Able to evidence supporting and developing qualified social workers and students
• Registered with Social Work England
• Have a current UK driving licence and vehicle

As a Advanced Social worker in our Children in Care and Care Leavers team you will:

• 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 will bring the desire to work with children and families to give them the right support, at the right time with the aim of keeping and bringing families back together where it is safe to do so.

We support an agile working environment, where this is office based with some flexible working, as well as visits within and outside the county.

"We're happy to talk flexible working"

For more information about this vacancy or for an informal chat please contact Amanda Redding at

Interviews will be held during the 8th December

Our Recruitment Process: We anonymise applications during shortlisting to ensure only relevant information is considered. Please complete your application fully, especially the supporting statement, to highlight what you'll bring to the role

About Staffordshire County Council

We are no ordinary county council:

Our Values:

The core of who we are as an organisation. Just like we all have personal values that shape our thoughts and behaviour, organisational values drive how we think and act collectively.

Our values were created and shaped by colleague feedback and national best practice and they sit at the heart of People Strategy:

We have a real sense of community spirit that brings our people together. This feeling of belonging means we are all connected to what we do and take pride in the difference we make every day for Staffordshire people. We are ambitious and our sights are set firmly on a better future.

We look forward and race ahead - that goes for your career too.

Our benefits:

We recognise that it is our employees that are central to everything we do. We aim to create a supportive working environment where employees can achieve their full potential and achieve a healthy work-life balance.

In addition to your salary, as a member of staff, you will have access to Our rewards and benefits - Careers at Staffordshire

Our recruitment process:

As an Authority we are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people/vulnerable adults and expect all staff and volunteers to share this commitment.

Staffordshire County Council is an equal opportunities organisation and Disability Confident employer. We encourage applications from all background and communities

As part of our commitment as a Disability Confident employer, a Gold Award Armed Forces employer and our commitment to supporting care leavers - we offer a guaranteed interview as long as your application meets the minimum criteria for the post.

As you'll know safeguarding and promoting the welfare of our children and young people/vulnerable adults is important to us and that's why this position is subject to a criminal record check from the Disclosure and Barring Service. If applicable you should disclose details of unspent and unfiltered spent reprimands, formal warnings, cautions and convictions in your application form.