Social Worker

Job Introduction

This is an exciting opportunity to join the Children’s Disability Service as a Social Worker at a time where there is significant investment across Children’s Social Care.

We are committed to working with partners and families to support children and young people to be safe and secure, to promote physical and emotional well-being and to help them achieve their full potential within their communities.

A rare opportunity has arisen across Staffordshire Families First for a full time Social Worker within the Children’s Disability Service. This post is based in Burton upon Trent, Staffordshire.

We have 4 Children’s Disability teams across the county, and they provide specialist services for children and young people with complex disabilities. These are small teams of highly dedicated Social Workers who support each other in the day to day task of ensuring we reach the best outcomes for our Disabled children in a timely manner, enabling them to live their lives to the full. We also are supported by a team of skilled Family Support Workers who assist in facilitating behaviour management work and undertaking direct work.

Main Responsibility

As a qualified Social Worker, you will be based within a small team of between 7/8 Social Workers. You will be expected to be a team player. The ability to engage and communicate with disabled children is essential and the successful applicant will be committed to ensuring the children on their case load receive the best quality service.

In Staffordshire, we have recently embarked upon the journey of embedding a new practice model, restorative practice. We want to improve the lives of all children and young people, using a whole system approach enabling children to be happy, healthy and safe and supporting families to enable children to remain at home wherever possible. We confidently manage risks and are supported to be courageous and ambitious as an organisation. Restorative approaches are widely accepted as a highly effective way of achieving better outcomes for children, young people and their families.

The Ideal Candidate

We are looking for:

• qualified Social Workers, ideally with a minimum of 12 months post qualification experience with direct experience working with children and families who are committed to supporting children to remain with their families.
• excellent communication skills, the ability to build relationships with children, families and other professionals alongside a value base committed to striving for the best outcomes for children.

For more information about these vacancies, please contact Natasha Davies, Team Manager, on natasha.davies@staffordshire.gov.uk, or 01785 895787

About Staffordshire County Council

We are no ordinary county council:

Our Values:

The core of who we are as an organisation. Just like we all have personal values that shape our thoughts and behaviour, organisational values drive how we think and act collectively.

Our values were created and shaped by colleague feedback and national best practice and they sit at the heart of People Strategy:

We have a real sense of community spirit that brings our people together. This feeling of belonging means we are all connected to what we do and take pride in the difference we make every day for Staffordshire people. We are ambitious and our sights are set firmly on a better future.

We look forward and race ahead - that goes for your career too. 

Our benefits:

We recognise that it is our employees that are central to everything we do. We aim to create a supportive working environment where employees can achieve their full potential and achieve a healthy work-life balance. 

In addition to your salary, as a member of staff, you will have access to Our rewards and benefits - Careers at Staffordshire

Our recruitment process:

As an Authority we are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people/vulnerable adults and expect all staff and volunteers to share this commitment.

Staffordshire County Council is an equal opportunities organisation and Disability Confident employer. We encourage applications from all background and communities

As part of our commitment as a Disability Confident employer, a Silver Award Armed Forces employer and our commitment to supporting care leavers - we offer a guaranteed interview as long as your application meets the minimum criteria for the post. 

As you’ll know safeguarding and promoting the welfare of our children and young people/vulnerable adults is important to us and that’s why this position is subject to a criminal record check from the Disclosure and Barring Service. If applicable you should disclose details of unspent and unfiltered spent reprimands, formal warnings, cautions and convictions in your application form.