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Form of work
Salary9 Month Secondment / Fixed Term Contract
Maternity cover with potential to extend to 12 months
Are you an experienced social worker who wants to use their frontline practice knowledge and experience to drive best practice within social work and across Children and Families Services? Are you interested in supporting organisational change and development? Do you have a passion for supporting social work learning and progression? If so this role could be for you.
Our Workforce and Practice Development Lead oversees the development and implementation of the learning and development programme across all of Children and Families (CFS) and the recruitment processes within CFS. This includes training and development opportunities for social workers, youth workers, other practitioners, business support staff and foster carers. In this role, you would update and write the Workforce and Development Strategy and Action Plan ensuring a strong link between our learning programme and findings from our Quality Assurance Framework. This role will also have oversight of programmes for newly qualified social workers (the Assessed and Supported Year in Employment - ASYE), social work apprentices, student social workers and Practice education. The scope of this role is broad and allows for creativity and out of the box thinking. It also requires excellent organisation, planning and time management skills.
In this role you will manage the Workforce and Practice Development Hub which is part of the Quality Assurance and Improvement Team, within the Safeguarding and Quality Assurance Service. The service’s vision and mission statement is focused on improving outcomes for children and driving forward best practice across the whole service.
As a manager, you will need to demonstrate a good understanding of how to support your team members, encourage their personal and professional development and support them to create clear targets and meet their deadlines. Some of the work in this role will be based around project’s such as identifying a training need, scoping potential options to meet this need, creating a plan and then implementing and evaluating this. Within this role you would be managing a training budget and make strategic recommendations about spend based on clear evidence of need within the service. You would coordinate a strategic senior leadership workforce board, making organisational recommendations in relation to the Workforce Strategy.
Hackney’s Children and Families Services is committed to dismantling systemic racism, discrimination, injustice and making anti-racism a foundation of our practice.
We will:
- be a voice and force for change, for every child and family that we work for and with;
- recognise and address the impact of racism on children and families within our practice;
- apply our anti-racist principles in all of our interactions with and decision-making about children;
- and to determinedly and actively work with our partners supporting and ensuring anti-racist practice.
In this post, you will be expected to learn and understand our anti-racist practice standards and ensure you uphold these in all aspects of your work.
Your knowledge and experience of social work practice is key to understanding practice challenges, how to attract the best candidates in the role and then support their professional development to provide a high quality service to the children and families of Hackney. Understanding practice and the social work context, will enable you to see potential challenges that may arise in implementing a workforce development strategy and how to problem solve and navigate this.
We are currently developing and implementing the STAR practice model (Systemic, Trauma Informed and Anti-Racist) to guide both social work and youth work practice in Hackney Children and Families Services. In this role, you will be integral to support the development of a training programme which will ensure the model is embedded into everyday practice.
You will have:
- A social work qualification or equivalent and registration with Social Work England
- Up to date knowledge of good practice and research findings in working with children and families
- A commitment to developing anti-racist practice
- Empathy with children, young people and families and a commitment to providing them with the highest quality interventions
- Strong written and organisational skills, including the ability to present complex information in a concise and accessible format
- The ability to communicate with individuals and groups at different levels of the service and within partner organisations
- A social work practice educator qualification is desirable but not essential as this is a fixed term role.
If you share our values and are ready to be part of our exciting journey please click on the apply button below.
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The recruitment process is anonymous. Therefore, we do not accept supporting statements or CVs.
When applying, there will be a number of questions relating to the post on the application form. It is essential that you complete the application questions, responding to each using examples of your skills, knowledge and experience.
This application process replaces a supporting statement.
We are also working towards our vision, which is to be a place for everyone; where residents and staff can be proud; a place that celebrates diversity and where everyone can feel valued, included and involved. In order to achieve this, we look for people who are: Proud; Ambitious; Pioneering; Open; Proactive; Inclusive.
Hackney Council works to eradicate discrimination on the basis of race, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, pregnancy and maternity, age and marital status. We also recognise that people can be disadvantaged by their social and economic circumstances, so we will also work to eliminate discrimination and disadvantage caused by social class. We also welcome those interested in flexible working. We particularly welcome applications from Black and Global majority backgrounds and disabled people, as these groups are currently under represented in our leadership tiers within the workforce.
The Council has a dedicated employment support service (Hackney Works), which offers Hackney residents guidance in relation to applying for jobs. If you are thinking about applying for a job, please contact the Hackney Works team to find out what support is available.
Closing date for applications: 11 February 2024 (22:59)
Interview date: 29 February 2024
