Social Worker - Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children (UASC)

About the role

Do you have a passion for supporting Unaccompanied Asylum-Seeking Children and young people, their needs, experiences, and their future? Are you enthusiastic and have the child’s voice at the heart of everything you do? Join us in our new Unaccompanied Asylum-Seeking Children (UASC) team!

Our team will be made up of Social Workers and Personal Advisors and will be leading on all aspects of Unaccompanied Asylum-Seeking Children and young people’s experiences from the point that they come to Cambridgeshire. Recognising the trauma, challenges, and loss our children and young people have been through, whilst being able to undertake holistic assessments of their needs (including age assessments where necessary) and support them through the immigration system, whilst also being ambitious for their future.

Based in Scott House, Huntingdon, no two days are the same and we have fantastic ambitions for this new team within the Children in Care service.

Now is a great time to join Cambridgeshire County Council as we develop a new model of practice focussed on relationships and being aspirational for children in our care in terms of their homes, relationships with their families and educational opportunities. We commit to embedding the Council ambitions for a greener, fairer and more caring Cambridgeshire.

If this sounds like a role that suits your skill set, we would love to hear from you! For more information, please contact Catherine Isaacs on catherine.isaacs@cambridgeshire.gov.uk or Reema Pate-Lynn on reema.pate-lynn@cambridgeshire.gov.uk.

We expect interviews to be held at New Shire Hall, Alconbury Weald, week commencing the 10th of June. 

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.

What will you be doing?

Acting as the lead professional, you’ll ensure all matters in respect of safeguarding are dealt with promptly, effectively and in line with child protection procedures, escalating where necessary.

You’ll 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.

Developing effective and empowering relationships, engaging with children, young people, and their families, which facilitate change and improve outcomes.

With the child’s voice at the heart of your work, you’ll 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, and out of county, independently

Ideally, you’ll have worked with children in care as well as Unaccompanied Asylum-Seeking Children and young people, with experience of completing Age Assessments.

We would welcome applications from a diverse range of workers who are willing to work flexibly to enhance our existing workforce.

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

We will not be able to accept applications from Newly Qualified Social Workers for this role as we recruit to our ASYE programme at the beginning of each year. For more information and to register your interest roles and be notified when we're recruiting Newly Qualified Social Workers, head to our website.

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 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
• 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.

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.

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

Attached documents

• CCC CSC Social Worker UASC.pdf
• CSW Benefits Brochure 2024.pdf