AddressOverview
Social Work Coordinator
Location : London
Our mission
We are determined to create a more equal Islington, where everyone who lives here has an equal chance to thrive. To do this, everyone who works at Islington Council lives by a set of values which guide us in everything that we do: collaborative, ambitious, resourceful, and empowering. They spell out ‘CARE’, which is what we think public service is all about.
Job overview
This is post is part-time position for 17.5 hours per week.
Here is Islington we are recruiting for a Social Work Coordinator to work within our Disabled Children’s Service to support the valuable work do to prepare our Children and Young People with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) to transition into adulthood. We welcome applications from candidates who are from diverse ethnic backgrounds or intersectional communities.
Islington’s Children’s Social Care is developing practice to help vulnerable children, young people and their families to make meaningful and sustainable change in their lives. We are transforming the way we offer help by using Motivational Social Work (MSW) as a foundational approach to practice, which is grounded in Motivational Interviewing (MI) principles. This means we are working more purposefully and collaboratively with Children and Young People and their families to help them achieve their goals.
Main duties of the job
A Social Work Coordinator (SWC) is a para-professional whose primary function is to provide enhanced administrative support in meeting the demands of frontline practice. This practical support is critical in ensuring the child and family Social Worker’s time is used to best effect in helping families to keep children safe. This requires a high level of
understanding of a child and family Social Worker’s job in helping families to safeguard children.
SWC are the first point of contact for the team from other staff, service users and other professionals. As an experienced administrator the SWC is expected to anticipate the planning and preparation necessary ahead of the range of meetings that take place with families or other professionals.
The SWC is also expected to help the Social Workers they support stay organised. They manage the team calendar, which shows all meetings for the team so they will be able to help Social Workers prioritise their tasks.
Child and family Social Work is dynamic and responsive to both the local and national landscape, and the SWC must also adapt to changes within the organisation. The SWC role, as with all other roles in the Service, should engage in continuous quality improvement by always looking for ways to improve the way we work to identify gaps in systems and make improvements that will increase added value to frontline practice.
Working for our organisation
As a front facing service, your work will be divided between both being in the office and working from home. We value the ability to provide a flexible approach to both the service and the families we work with, whilst also supporting a healthy work life balance.
Closing date: Sunday 28th January 2024 at 23:59
Interviews: To be confirmed
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
- Take responsibility for promoting and safeguarding the welfare of children and young person’s / vulnerable adults in the care of the service, including undertaking regular Child Protection training at a level commensurate with role.
- Create, maintain and improve administrative systems to enable the service to meet its aims of delivering a high quality service to children and families.
- Work pro-actively and co-operatively within the service to ensure that timely and accurate information about activity and performance is produced and collated as required, and maintain statistical information to agreed deadlines and a high level of accuracy.
- Develop and maintain good working relationships with other teams within Children’s Social Care, other Council departments and clients referred to the service.
- Deal sensitively with enquiries or telephone messages, logging calls accurately and alerting Social Work staff or managers immediately to any issues requiring immediate attention.
- Use appropriate databases, Microsoft Office and other ICT systems to produce reports, spreadsheets and other documents as required supporting the service and assist others in the use of information technology systems when required.
- Follow guidelines to produce standard written or electronic responses to enquiries from family members or professionals to tight deadlines.
- Undertake support tasks on projects as required.
- Provide an effective diary-management function for Social Workers in order to effectively manage meetings, visits, etc.
- Undertake other duties commensurate to the grade of the post.
Person specification
Qualifications
Essential criteria
- Educated to at least GCSE or equivalent with Pass in English language
Experience
Essential criteria
- Significant experience in an administrative role
- Experience of providing diary management support and minuting meetings to a good standard
- Experience of using Microsoft office applications, including Word, Excel and PowerPoint to an advanced level
Skills
Essential criteria
- Displays an awareness, understanding and commitment to the protection and safeguarding of children and young people
- Knowledge and understanding of Children’s Social Care, and; • London Child Protection Procedures • Working Together to Safeguard Children
- Ability to work co-operatively and flexibly with others to deliver an effective support service by maintaining positive working relationships with staff and partner agencies
- Excellent organisational skills and experience of managing own workload, and effectively dealing with competing demands to meet deadlines
- Ability to create and maintain administrative systems for the effective collation and monitoring of performance information in a busy environment
- Excellent interpersonal, verbal, written, communication and presentation skills including the ability to explain complex information clearly and accurately
- Ability to support and adapt to change effectively
Applicant requirements
The postholder will have access to vulnerable people in the course of their normal duties and as such this post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service to check for any previous criminal convictions.
Documents to download
Apply online now
Further details / informal visits contact
- Name
- Rodney Gray
- Job title
- Head of service
- Email address
- Rodney.Gray@islington.gov.uk
- Telephone number
- 0207 527 3286
