Senior Practitioner - Assessment Team
Job Reference Ref/233/3183
Our benefits
We value our colleagues in Cambridgeshire County Council and have developed a number of benefits:
- Flexible and creative working arrangements, including 9-day fortnights
- 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 to keep you informed
- An employee recognition scheme
- We offer a generous mileage allowance
For our Senior Practitioners, 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
- Payment for business mileage expenses (45p per mile)
- Scalable retention payments to loyal social workers in specific teams after the first full year of employment, starting at £900 which increases during the first three years of service
- A pay progression scheme to enable our Social Workers to accelerate through the pay grade as you gain experience and skills.
- 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 the role
We are looking for passionate and enthusiastic Social Workers who have the child’s voice at the heart of everything they do to join us in our Assessment Team!
Our Assessment Teams are lively and fast-paced. We’re a team who have a passion for ensuring that children, young people and families in our community receive a positive and timely service. The work is rich, varied and allows for a high level of multi-agency working, often to tight timelines. The nature of our work means that you see positive outcomes quickly.
We are proud to have created a space for our social care colleagues to have an area to reflect as a team, as well as conducting monthly individual supervisions. We recognise that the job can bring challenges and are proud to offer our colleagues holistic support. You will have the opportunity to be creative with care planning and will have the opportunity to have your ideas and voice heard.
Our team is supported by Children’s Information and Advice Officers (CIAOs) which makes administrative tasks much more manageable. You will also be supported by a permanent Team Manager, who will provide you with a consistent and reliable senior leadership team.
We are supporting our colleagues in career progression and have a comprehensive Learning and Development team that offers bespoke training. This is supported by our Cambridgeshire Academy for Reaching Excellence (CARE) , which is aimed at nurturing and developing social care skills. The new Social Care Academy aims to improve outcomes for children and young people through support and training being offered for social work students and apprentices, international practitioners, experienced social workers and those in leadership positions. This is seen as a long-term investment to deliver excellent outcomes for children and young people of Cambridgeshire and to enable opportunities for them to thrive.
This supports our ways of working while also embedding the ambitions for a greener, fairer and more caring Cambridgeshire.
If this sounds like an environment where you would thrive, we would love to hear from you! For more information, call Nathalie on 01223 475920 or email joinus@cambridgeshire.gov.uk.
This is a rolling campaign and we check applications daily, don’t wait to apply!
In Children’s Services we are working to reshape what we do and how we do it. Why not be part of it?
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.
We support flexible working requests from day one of employment and so we are open to discussing different working patterns to help you bring your best self to work.
What will you be doing?
Day-to-day responsibilities of a Senior Practitioner in Assessment include:
- Provide leadership in high complex cases which involve risk, complexity and safety of children, young people and families.
- Provide written and verbal reports for a variety of settings, including court, that are concise, informative and based on analysis of complex evidence.
- To lead, guide and direct Social Workers and Child Practitioners, supporting with their performance and development, including supervision.
- Support in planning, allocation and review of cases.
- Support with the recruitment and induction of staff.
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 independently
For a full list of the requirements of the role, please check out the Job Description & Person Specification.
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.
Visit our jobs and careers section to find out more about our wide range of learning and development opportunities; apprenticeships; our wellbeing package; staff benefits; our commitment to equality, diversity and Inclusion.
