Children's Social Worker / Senior Social Worker - Response Team

Our social workers make a real difference. Every day they work with families to help children and young people who have had a difficult start in life to achieve their ambitions. You will be listening to young people and putting them at the heart of all that we do and working in partnership with families, equipping them with the skills they need to ensure young people live in happy, healthy and safe homes. We are pleased to say that we provide an Ofsted rated 'Good' service, our Ofsted report can be viewed here; we are seeking additional driven professionals to help us to collectively maintain and build on this for the ongoing betterment of the children and young people of South Gloucestershire. Although this post is advertised as a full time position, we encourage and welcome applications from experienced social workers who may be seeking part time, job share or flexible working arrangements. What you will be doing

• We have a strong culture of giving staff the time, freedom and support to explore new and better ways of doing things, so we're looking for individuals keen to use their creativity to deliver high quality, child-centred practices, which ensure the best outcomes for children and families.
• The Response Team sits within the Front Door of our Integrated Children's Service. You will be assessing and managing risk where there is possible, or actual, significant harm to children to ensure that children are kept safe and protected from abuse. You will be undertaking statutory assessments of cases meeting the threshold for social care intervention, this includes child protection investigations., We're a positive, proactive team, with supportive management who listen to ideas, and act on them - fast. Coming out of Covid, we've seen rapidly increasing demand to support children and families with ever more complex needs. We recognised the pressure this was placing on our frontline teams and to ensure we can deliver on our high ambitions for our children and young people, we're making significant new investments in these areas.
• We're expanding our frontline teams. We've created 60 new roles, which will mean consistently lower caseloads for our social workers, so they can deliver genuinely child-centred support.
• We're making it easier for staff to work flexibly, enabling them to work how and where they need to, to do their jobs as well as they can.
• We're strengthening our reward offer to recognise the fantastic job our staff do.
• We're adopting clinical supervision to support staff because we recognise that our work can be tough emotionally. It builds on our training offer, helping staff to develop critical thinking skills and support their work with families.
• We're building early intervention partnership capacity because we know we can achieve better results for families if we get multi-agency working right.
• We're increasing what we spend on evidence-based specialist expertise and capabilities, including specialist trauma support and an in-house psychologist to support families.
• We're introducing new initiatives like the Mockingbird extended family model in fostering, a Caring Dads scheme and a new approach to domestic abuse.
• We're enhancing an already exceptional training and development offer. A new systemic practice academy will drive our focus on relationship based social work.
• Finally, it might be boring, but we're investing in our systems and processes, because we want them to help us, rather than hold us back in our work.
These investments demonstrate our absolute focus on providing an excellent, family-centred service. We keep workloads manageable, we welcome flexible working and we're recognised for the opportunities we provide for career development, training and secondment. It's not the managers who say this - it's our colleagues. Right now, we're looking for talented, ambitious social workers to join us across our adult and children's services. Our commitments to you - Unmatched training, development and secondment opportunities - A proactive team with supportive management - Commitment to excellence - Realistic caseloads - Flexible working opportunities - A comprehensive Assessed and Supported Year in Employment (ASYE) programme South Gloucestershire offers a rich mix of stunning countryside and urban culture. At the same time, due to our being near to the M4, M5 and M32, it's an easy commute from Bristol, Bath, Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Oxfordshire, Somerset and, with the bridge charges recently abolished, south Wales.


• A qualified social worker with relevant registration to practice and a good understanding of asset and strengths based approaches to social work.
• You will have already successfully completed your ASYE (where qualifying since 2012)
• You will be able to evidence significant skills, knowledge and experience to be able to assess and manage risk for the most vulnerable children in the community.
• You will be able to demonstrate a detailed understanding of successful strategies to improve outcomes for children, young people and families.
• A problem solver, confident about making important decisions, underpinned by a genuine passion to work collaboratively with children, young people and families to meet their goals and aspirations
• Innovation, positivity and dedication. You'll welcome challenge and embrace change.
Please note that due to the nature of this role it is a requirement of employment that an enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check is obtained for this post. You will be required to travel widely to a range of locations within the Authority so you must have a current driving licence and access to a car.

At South Gloucestershire Council, we'll support you at every moment.

We invest in the careers of our people and we are recognised for the quality, breadth and depth of our training and development offer, which helps our people make the greatest long-term difference in their work. "Staff are overwhelmingly positive about working for South Gloucestershire Council. Staff report feeling heard and responded to by senior leaders. Reduced workloads, increased stability of managers and more business support have strengthened their ability to respond to and improve the quality of practice for children. A wealth of concentrated training, including the Programme for Change initiative, has developed skill sets and expertise of staff. Staff benefit from a clear pathway of career progression, including a bespoke managers development programme.." [Ofsted Report published July 2024] A career at South Gloucestershire is an opportunity for you to progress when you are ready. Any post can become any social worker grade, be it at initial recruitment or through internal progression, our current grades and salaries are:
• Social Worker £35,235 - £37,938
• Advanced Social Worker £39,513 - £42,708
• Senior Social Worker £43,693 - £46,731
We have a fluid career progression programme and structure, what does this mean for you?
• You no longer need to wait for a vacancy to gain promotion.
• Apply for progression assessment when you are ready, no restrictions on application windows.
• Earn a higher income for your recognised experience.
• Gain promotion without needing to change teams, managers or employer - fast track your potential.
• Senior roles leading to both managerial or practice specialist careers.
• Gain experience in other teams with secondment opportunities encouraged.
These posts attract a gross lump sum £3,000 'recruitment payment' pro rata offered to enable Social Workers who have already successfully completed their ASYE to join our permanent workforce. This is payable upon successful completion of your probationary period (after approximately 3-6 months) and is subject to eligibility criteria. These posts are currently eligible for a market factor £3,000 'retention payment' pro rata, payable in November annually to those with two years' service with the council in Children's Social Care In an eligible post, inclusive of any ASYE period. We also provide up to £8,000 relocation package, flexible working and a suite of employee benefits including a generous annual leave entitlement, pension and Social Work England registration fees reimbursement. We know our team work best when they have balance in their lives and we offer genuine flexibility to help them achieve that work/life balance.