Adult Social Care Practice Development Lead

About the role

Are you a critically reflective social worker, looking to take the next step in your career, and/or wanting to complete a qualification while working? This is an exciting time to join our team as we look to recruit 20 Adult Social work apprentices.

Cambridgeshire County Council Learning and Development Team is looking for a 2 full time and 1 part time Adult Social Care Practice Development Lead. You will have extensive experience in social work practice and/or have experience of being a Social Work Practice Educator (PEPS 2) and/or ASYE assessor; or willingness to undertake your PEPS qualification. You will understand how professional learning happens in the workplace and the elements of support that can help sustain this. You will need an understanding of project planning and quality assuring of assessment. You will be analytical and have strong communication skills both verbal and written.

You’ll be joining a welcoming and friendly Adults' team of around 12, and the wider Learning and Development Team of 40 colleagues. We support the learning and development of colleagues through our Learning Management System which hosts e-learning modules and a booking system for face-to-face and online training. Alongside this, we support staff to complete work-based qualifications.

The post holder will be able to work flexibly from home or from our Stanton House office in Huntingdon and other offices around the County when the need arises. We are also able to offer flexible working patterns, these allow everyone to effectively blend their work and life commitments. At Cambridgeshire County Council, we know that we work better if we can have flexibility in our working arrangements, and we want to help everyone to achieve this, so please talk to us about the working pattern that would most suit you to be successful in this role. Please clearly outline in your personal statement if you wish to apply for a full-time or part-time role. 

For more information or to chat about this opportunity please contact Lee Taylor, Adult Social Care L&D Business Partner on Lee.Taylor@Cambridgeshire.gov.uk

Interviews will be taking place on 17^th July at Stanton House, Huntingdon. 

What will you be doing?

These opportunities are fixed term positions for the duration of the apprenticeship programme (36-40 months) (for internal candidates this can also be offered as a secondment opportunity). As practice leads you will be supporting the professional development and assessment of our newly appointed Social Work apprentices over the course of the degree apprenticeship. You will be responsible for or the creation, development, implementation, and evaluation of a wide range of professional learning opportunities across adult services. These opportunities, whether it be classroom or virtually based training, coaching, one-to-one teaching, mentoring, action learning or reflective supervision, directly enhance the knowledge, skills, capabilities, and attributes of Social Care staff across Adults' services. You will work in partnership with others to develop these opportunities in a collaborative, sustainable and participatory manner. This includes sharing and developing best practice with universities, apprenticeship providers, regional and county safeguarding partnership boards, national government, and regional workforce consortia, as well organisations within the private and voluntary sector. You will be the key link to the HEI delivering the social work apprenticeship programme.

About you

You will be an experienced social worker who inspires others and delivers change. You will have a passion and commitment for supporting and developing learners as they begin their social work career. You will advocate good practice and allow practitioners to reflect on their practice creating a learning environment which enables them to increase their skills and knowledge as they work with increasingly complex cases.

Our benefits

We value our colleagues in Cambridgeshire County Council and have developed a number of benefits:

• Flexible working
• Flexible Bank Holidays
• A comprehensive wellbeing package
• Our Cambs Rewards employee discounts
• A comprehensive pension scheme
• IDEAL staff equality, diversity and inclusion network.
• Camweb our staff intranet helping to keep you informed
• An employee recognition scheme

About us

Cambridgeshire is a great place to work and live with a diverse population, an urban centre in Cambridge, historic Isle of Ely, Huntingdon and St Ives as well as more rural landscapes.

Our four values are central to our culture, driving everything we do.

We are proud to serve the diverse communities of Cambridgeshire and want our workforce to be reflective of this diversity, which we firmly believe benefits our colleagues, the organisation and our communities. If you don’t meet every single requirement in the job role but think this could be you, please don’t be put off.   We are committed to building a workplace that is compassionate and inclusive as well as diverse, so if you think you could be a good candidate for this role please consider applying and speak to the recruiting manager if you have any questions.

Our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy, along with our employee network 'IDEAL' and self-organised peer support groups help us to foster an inclusive, supportive and safe working environment where people feel valued, respected, and empowered.  We collect relevant diversity data for monitoring as part of the recruitment process to understand the diversity of our applicants and monitor any trends throughout the recruitment processes so that we can take meaningful action.

We are proud to be a Disability Confident Employer. We fully support providing reasonable adjustments throughout our recruitment process, as well as when you join us, and we encourage candidates to contact the Hiring Manager, whose details can be found in the advert, to discuss any adjustment needs. Some examples of adjustments could include additional time to complete an assessment or printing a document on pastel coloured paper with larger font size and line spacing. We would value talking about what might be possible to enable you to join us and thrive, so if there is something that would help you to do your best during your journey with us, please get in touch.

Visit our jobs and careers section to find out more about our wide range of learning and development opportunities; apprenticeships; our wellbeing package; staff benefits; our commitment to equality, diversity and Inclusion. 

https://www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk/council/jobs-and-careers

Attached documents

• Social Care Practice Development Lead RD June 24.docx