CAMHS Senior Social Worker

As a member of the Children Looked After Team, your role will be to support children living with relatives, friends, foster families and perspective adopters, or older children living in children's homes and semi-independent units. You will build sustainable relationships with the young people and plan for their permanence; ensuring their safety as you support them to take the necessary steps towards independence.

Through regular visits, assessments and reviewing their Care Plan, you will nurture and develop meaningful relationships with these children and young people; understand and interpret their wishes, and champion them to reach their full potential. Occasionally, you will be required to prepare reports and attend court.

You will be supported in this challenging role with regular supervision and consultations with our Mental Health Focussed Social Worker. You will also find support by working alongside other social workers, family support workers and partnership organisations such as: Health Services, Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (New Leaf), Independent Reviewing Officers and carers.

About the Role

As a CAMHS Senior Social Worker in the Children Looked After team you will contribute to the delivery of multi-agency CAMHS for children and young people with complex mental health needs, bringing a social care perspective to the work of the CAMHS Community Teams.

You will contribute to the development of reflective and systemic thinking within Children's Services, offering a mentoring role around the identification and appropriate treatment pathways for children experiencing emotional and mental health difficulties. Supporting and protecting children and young people with mental health difficulties and their families will be at the heart of all you do by providing a range of interventions including:

• consultation


• reflection


• joint case working


• participation in case reviews


• assessment of need


• mental health assessments


• care planning and intervention


You will also attend statutory meetings in relation to cases where your involvement would be beneficial.


• You are a qualified social worker, registered with Social Work England


• Good communication & engagement skills to ensure that the CAMHS Social Work service operates in a safe and efficient way, as part of the whole system of partnership and multi-agency working


• Evidence of effective partnership working to enable you to establish and promote positively key relationships


• A minimum of two years therapeutic intervention experience or training in this area to enable you to deliver effective 1-1 therapeutic interventions to young people


Surrey has both urban and rural areas and social care workers will be expected to have a valid driving licence to drive in the UK and access to a vehicle and be willing to travel across a wide geographical area. Reasonable adjustments where needed will be made for successful applicants who have a disability or long term health condition to enable them to fulfil the requirements of the job.


• 26 days' holiday (prorated for part time staff), rising to 28 days after 2 years' service and 30 days after 5 years' service


• Option to buy up to 10 days of additional annual leave


• An extensive Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) to support health and wellbeing


• Up to 5 days of carer's leave per year


• Paternity, adoption and dependents leave


• A generous local government salary related pension


• Lifestyle discounts including gym, travel, shopping and many more


• 2 paid volunteering days plus 1 team volunteering day per year


• Learning and development hub where you can access a wealth of resources