The Senior Social Worker will be providing an episode of targeted intensive time-limited support to children and families open to an allocated social worker. The Senior Social Worker will be an integral part of the professional network to enable the reunification of children who have recently come into care, are already in Care, stabilising emergency placements with family member’s/kinship carers or to enable children to step down from high support placements to foster care as part of the reunification plan. This exciting role will involve a high level of direct work with adolescents and their families, including those placed outside of Newham and involve working outside of business hours.
We can offer training in our relational model and support to develop systemic practice and we have a wide training offer including safeguarding and systemic training and you will be working within a service where learning and practice development are held in high priority, supported by a permanent management team.
The Senior Social Worker will be responsible for implementing the co-production of bespoke reunification plans jointly with the allocated social workers within the Children in Care Service, the family and the professional network. Where required, this will also include providing written support plans to be incorporated within the Court Care Plans and Statements. The Senior Social Worker will supervise the Coaches within the Team and support the Team Manager in the implementation of consultations, closures and performance led targets. There will be CPD opportunities for the successful applicant.
We are looking for Senior Social Workers with significant post qualifying experience within a statutory children’s social work service. It’s essential that applicants understand the value of working with families from first point of contact to completion and are enthusiastic about this way of working. We’re also keen to meet practitioners who value their own CPD, will make the most of our academy offer and are excited about the prospect of working with management to embed good practice and support colleagues.
We’re looking for conscientious, considerate and empathetic people, who are committed to working relationally with families whilst putting every child’s welfare, potential, and future at the heart of their work. Newham is committed to our workforce being representative of the families we work with, to enhance cultural competence and adjust our practice to suit the individuals we serve. We are looking for colleagues who share our values and are passionate about tackling disproportionality wherever they find it and building a Fairer Newham.
Applicants will need to evidence their experience of supporting families as well as supporting and engaging adolescents. A good knowledge of the factors that can impact on reunifications being successful is essential and will need to be demonstrated in application and at interview. You will have experience in undertaking needs assessments and contributing to risk and safety planning and will have experience of working with statutory services. You will have demonstrable experience of working with children, young people and families with highly complex and challenging needs and be dynamic and creative. You will have demonstrable experience of working within a multi-disciplinary environment and with stakeholders in the community.
You will be a qualified social worker, registered with Social Work England, and be committed to tackling disproportionality where you find it.
We’re a vibrant, dynamic, culturally rich London Borough with a young population and limitless potential. We’re a challenging yet rewarding place for social work practise to flourish and we are steadfastly committed to our workforce being representative of the families that we work with. We are taking coordinated, meaningful and focused action to develop an inclusive culture because we believe this is at the heart of enabling diversity in all respects, including diversity of thought. We are taking positive actions to challenge all forms of discrimination and injustice to help make Newham a fairer and more equitable place for children and families to live, learn and thrive.
We’re building a fairer Newham through investment, co-production and by continuously developing our 'Circles of Support' practice model; centring on systemic and restorative practice and a specialist support offer for our practitioners. Ofsted described Newham as having a positive culture of learning and development and we always try to develop talent in-house. We promoted 30 internal colleagues in 2023 alone, and have put more than 47 practitioners through further education since 2020. We value your development and at Newham career progression is a reality for many of our colleagues.
We understand that social work can be a challenging yet ultimately very rewarding profession that makes demands of you personally and professionally. In Newham we value your wellbeing and we aim to ensure that you have a better work/life balance through a remote working offer when you are not visiting children and families, a modern office space for when you’re on site, a flexible working policy where all requests are considered, and a clinical offer to support you to do your best work.
We’ve been working hard to make Newham a great place to practise social work:
