Children's Social Care Roles

Job description

Are you looking for **New Start** to your **New Year**? Your journey with BwD Borough Council starts here in you considering which of our Children’s Social Work and Team Manager roles is perfect for you.

Working here at Blackburn with Darwen, you really can make a difference to the lives of our families, children and young people that we are incredibly proud of.

Our aim is to ‘Listen, Learn, Act’ as our employees are at the heart of our organisation. At recent briefings, employees fed back to us that they felt listened to around ideas, culture, transformation and new ways of working and that is exactly why we have reshaped how our teams deliver services. We know we cannot deliver our services and achieve fantastic results without our employees feeling happy, motivated and supported in their roles. As we like to say “Big enough to cope, small enough to care”
- **Children’s Advice & Duty Service - Social Worker**:

- As a social worker on this team you will be the first point of contact for referrals into Children’s Services. As an experienced social worker you will provide advice and guidance to parents, carers and other professionals identifying whether intervention is required from statutory social work services. Social work recommendations will be made promptly to ensure that the children of Blackburn with Darwen receive the right help at the right time.
- **Children’s Advice & Duty Service - Practice Manager **- The Practice Manager will ensure high quality effective social work practice by leading on the response at the front door and modelling excellent social work practice within the Children’s Advice and Duty Service. Working with Social Workers, other professionals, partner agencies and families, often in difficult situations and under significant pressure, the Practice Manager will work alongside the Team Manager to support team members to operate to their required level and use their own expertise and decision making skills.
- **Duty, Assessment and Child in Need Social Work Team** - The role of a social worker in this team will work on a 4 week rotational basis, working closely with SW colleagues in our Children’s Advice and Duty Service responding to referrals where children, young people and their families need a statutory service. SWs in these teams complete assessments to understand the lived experience of children, with children’s voices coming through clearly in the assessment, informing intervention and planning. Those children and families requiring Child in Need level support, receive relationship based practice and strong multi-agency working to drive impactful change for children.
- **Child Protection, Pre-proceedings and Court Team** - This social worker role will work with children, young people and their families from the point of Child Protection intervention being required. Where the risk has increased to Child Protection level you will work through Child Protection plans, utilise effective pre-proceedings or within care proceedings ensuring timely outcomes for children and young people.
- **Advanced Practitioner - **We have advanced social work practitioner vacancies in our Duty, Assessment & Children in Need and our Child Protection, Pre-proceedings and Court teams. As an advanced practitioner you will work with some of our more complex children, young people and families alongside provide support to other social workers within your team.
- **Independent Reviewing Officers (IROs) **- The Independent Review Officer role sits within Children’s Services but is independent of the Local Authority. The IRO’s are a dedicated team of experienced social workers who make an important contribution to the goals of improving the outcomes for looked after children. The primary focus is to quality assure the care plans for each looked after child, and to ensure that a child/young person’s views and wishes are given full consideration. IROs chair Child Protection Conferences for the Local Authority’s most vulnerable children. The chair ensures that Child Protection Plans are robustly implemented, reviewed and progressed to ensure timely outcomes for children, young people and their families.
- **Team Manager - **We have a Team Manager vacancy in our Fostering Team (connected carers). Our Team Managers lead, inspire and drive operations with one of our team of social workers. On the fostering team the role of the connected carers team manager will ensure robust and holistic connected carer assessments are completed within timescales, whilst the team work in close collaboration with children’s social work teams and the court. This is a small, specialised team which provides exciting opportunities in the development of SGO support to ensure permanence plans are achieved without delay, and are maintained with the appropriate support
- **Children in our Care (CIOC) - **As a social worker on this team there will be an exciting opportunity to shape th