Social Worker - Children In Care

About the role

We are looking for passionate and enthusiastic Social Workers who have the child’s voice at the heart of everything they do to join us in our Children in Care Team!

Our aim in Children in Care is to achieve permanence for children and young people who become Looked After and to ensure that they are in a home which meets their needs, reflects their right to safety and security, and encourage them to reach their full potential at every stage of their development. We encourage all Looked After children and young people to meet their full educational potential and to promote both their physical and mental health.

The office bases are in Huntingdon and Ely.

If this sounds like an role that suits your skill set, we would love to hear from you! For more information, call Beth on 01223 475920 or email joinus@cambridgeshire.gov.uk.

This is a rolling campaign and we check applications daily, don’t wait to apply!

In Children’s Services we are working to reshape what we do and how we do it. Why not be part of it?

Appointment to this post will be subject to the outcome of an Enhanced Disclosure obtained through the Disclosure and Barring Service. The Council is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and vulnerable adults and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment.

We support flexible working requests from day one of employment and so we are open to discussing different working patterns to help you bring your best self to work.

What will you be doing?

Day-to-day responsibilities of a Social Worker in Children in Care include:

• Act as the lead professional and ensure all matters in respect of safeguarding are dealt with promptly, effectively and in line with child protection procedures, escalating where necessary.
• Undertake assessments to identify and respond to needs, building on strength and ensuring that analysis is robust and leads to clear outcomes that can be met through SMART targets.
• Engage with children, young people, and their families or carers to develop effective and empowering relationships which facilitate change and improve outcomes.
• Produce reports and plans for a variety of forums, including court, which are child focussed and reflect their experience.

About you

We're looking for confident and dynamic individuals who enjoy making a difference in their local community, are curious and spot things that others might not see, enjoys building relationships and likes to explore possibilities.

You must:

• Be a qualified Social Worker with a Social Work England registration
• Have the ability to work from a variety of locations and travel countywide independently

For a full list of the requirements of the role, please check out the Job Description & Person Specification.

About us

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.

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

Our benefits

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

• Flexible and creative working arrangements
• 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
• We offer a generous mileage allowance

For our Social Workers, we offer more specific benefits like:

• Generous annual leave provision (28 days, plus bank holidays)
• A supportive management team that will champion your learning and development
• Employee Assistance Programme – access to free support 24 hours a day
• Scalable retention payments to loyal Social Workers in specific teams after the first full year of employment, starting at £900 which increases during the first three years of service
• A relocation package of up to £8000 for eligible candidates
• Plus, 6 days of protected time each year to enable our Social Workers to maintain their Continuous Professional Development.

Please read our benefits brochure attached for more information.