Senior Social Worker - Family Help Lead Practitioner Patchway

South Gloucestershire's children's social care service is rated Good by Ofsted, and we are committed to maintaining and building on this strong foundation. As a Senior Social Worker in Family Help, you will provide experienced, relationship-based social work practice for children and families whose needs may include Child in Need, Child Protection and the early stages of Children in Care planning. You will manage the most complex children within the team, using skilled professional judgement to assess risk, strengthen safety and support families to make sustainable change. Alongside your own casework, you will help the Team Manager develop practice, support less experienced colleagues and promote consistent, high-quality decision-making. What you will be doing Working within a multi-disciplinary Family Help and Best Start Community Team, you will combine complex case responsibility with professional leadership. Children's voices, family networks and relationship-based practice will remain central as you coordinate statutory support and help families build safety, confidence and resilience. The role also contributes to team development through reflective supervision, mentoring, group learning and leadership in specialist areas of practice. You may directly manage a small number of alternatively qualified practitioners and will support the Team Manager with service quality, professional standards and team performance.

• Holding the most complex Family Help cases across Child in Need, Child Protection and early Children in Care, completing high-quality assessment, planning, intervention and review.
• Making robust and timely decisions where there is risk of significant harm, balancing children's safety, family rights and statutory responsibilities.
• Facilitating family group decision-making, strengthening family networks and coordinating effective multi-agency support.
• Providing professional oversight, supervision, mentoring and practice guidance to alternatively qualified staff, students and less experienced Social Workers.
• Leading group learning, workshops or a specialist area of practice while contributing to service development, policy, performance and continuous improvement., 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.


• We require you to hold a recognised Social Work qualification and current registration with Social Work England, together with a relevant post-qualifying award.
• You will have significant post-qualification experience in a Local Authority children's services setting, including evidence-based work with vulnerable children and families.
• You will bring detailed knowledge of children's legislation and practice, with strong skills in assessment, risk analysis, safety planning and complex statutory decision-making.
• You will have experience of staff supervision, mentoring or practice development and be able to support others through constructive challenge, reflective learning and professional guidance.
• You will be an effective communicator and relationship builder, confident handling difficult and sensitive issues with children, families, colleagues and partner agencies.
What you need to know
• We are unable to accommodate applications from newly qualified social workers or candidates who require an Assessed and Supported Year in Employment (ASYE). Applicants must already have successfully completed their ASYE.
• This position is based in our West Family Help Hub, in Patchway.
• Although this post is advertised as full time, we welcome applications from experienced Social Workers seeking part-time, job-share or flexible working arrangements.
• You will be expected to travel throughout the authority and surrounding area, so you must have a full, valid driving licence with regular access to a vehicle insured for business use or have an alternative suitable means of travel.
• An enhanced DBS check is required, and you will need to travel throughout the authority and surrounding area, with occasional work outside normal office hours.
  
  At South Gloucestershire Council, we'll support you at every moment.
  
  As part of our benefits package, you will receive generous annual leave (pro rata), employee wellbeing support and you will have access to a range of staff discounts, including eye tests, travel, shopping and leisure activities.
• 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.
• We invest in the careers of our people, and we are recognised for the quality, breadth and depth of our training and development offer, which helps our people make the greatest long-term difference in their work.
• What's special here is the strength of the team ethos. We are a relatively small local authority, so managers know staff well. They can plan their services to ensure teams have manageable caseloads and have effective supervision so feel supported to make decisions which are right for the children and young people they work with.
• We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the safety and welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults. Ensuring all our staff are given right skills, knowledge and support to recognise and respond effectively to potential abuse or neglect.
These posts attract a gross lump sum £3,000 'recruitment payment' pro rata offered to enable experienced 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 currently eligible for a market factor £3,000 'retention payment' pro rata, payable in November annually to those with two years' service with the council in Children's Social Care In an eligible post, inclusive of any ASYE period. Our teams at South Gloucestershire Council are making a real difference to the lives of people who live, work and learn here.
• We're building and shaping communities which people are proud of.
• We're providing essential services across our communities to ensure they are safe and well maintained.
• We've achieved a great deal, but we need talented and dedicated people to ensure we continue to make a difference.