Advanced Social Work Practitioner

**The job itself**:
**The job itself**

The East Riding of Yorkshire Council, Children’s Services have been rated GOOD by Ofsted following our recent ILACS inspection. Inspections commented that ‘the development of the workforce academy, the practice standards and quality assurance framework has created a solid foundation for consistent practice to be developed from. There is a strong culture within the local authority of workers being supported in developing their careers. There is a comprehensive training offer available to support practice improvement.’

A great and exciting opportunity has arisen within the Participation, Innovation and Improvement portfolio for an Advanced Social Work Practitioner to support our continued improvement activity in driving strength based and relational based practice in our work with children, young people and their networks. The role will primarily work directly in a modelling and supportive approach and indirectly in a consultative approach with practitioners within the portfolios across the Children and Young People Safeguarding & Support Services (CYPSSS), including our Early Help and Prevention Portfolio.

We are looking for a practitioner with a passion about strength-based approaches and forming a relational based approach to securing good outcomes through supporting practitioners providing interventions to children, young people and their networks. We are looking to develop and build upon your experience of working with children and young people in an exciting role that is central to the development of a culture of driving up practice and improving the lived experience for those children and young people we work with. This is a specialist role in a large and extremely ambitious service, working across multiple portfolios, multiple complexities and with multiple users and partners.

**Our model**

**‘You can, I can, We can’**

We have created a bespoke practice model that reflects and connects our vision, our value base and our behaviour as one East Riding of Yorkshire approach to working with children, young people and their families, which is nurtured and grown from within East Riding of Yorkshire CYPSSS and owned by our workforce.

We remain committed to Signs of Safety as a practice framework, but this will be set within a much wider, values based, model of practice that clearly connects Signs of Safety much more clearly with the East Riding value base, and our overall approach to making and sustaining relationships with children, families, and communities.

Without a well embedded model, there is nothing to centre our practice on to ensure that, while the work may be different, all our teams are grounded in the same values, beliefs, theories and approaches. Having a well-developed practice model helps to create a common language for the service and enables everyone to understand how we go about doing the right things, in the right way and for the right reasons for children and their families.

You will contribute to the Quality of Practice agenda within the Directorate to help embed and promote a culture that leads to high quality and impact focused outcomes for children, young people and their families in East Riding of Yorkshire.

You will be required to work with service leads, front line managers and front-line practitioners to agreed outcome focused requirements in driving up practice across CYPSSS.

You will demonstrate good experience of front-line practice, within a children’s social work service with an ability to identify what good practice looks like.

You will have advanced working knowledge of childcare legislative framework, strength based and restorative based approaches, as well as, relational based practice.

You will have great attention to detail and the ability to interrogate and analyse complex information with good accuracy, including an ability to critically evaluate children and young people’s lived experience so that support can be provided to ensure interventions are outcome and impacted focused.

You will need to be social work qualified and have strong experience of social work practice and experience of developing others, including evidence of a practice educator/practice assessor qualification (or willingness to achieve within 1 year) and demonstrable commitment to your own professional development

We are a small team and positive relationships are valued. You will also be working with the teams across our service and therefore, it is essential that the post holder is able to work effectively with others with a flexible and adaptable approach in a relational based approach.

You will be able to demonstrate a high level of motivation and the ability to work independently, with skills in working within timescales and with conflicting priorities.

The post holder will be managed by the team manager for the Effective Practice, Learning and Development service within the Participation, Innovation and Improvement Portfoli