Sanctuary Social Care has permanent vacancy for a Senior Practitioner to work full-time based in Berkshire, within the POD Service. The ideal candidate will possess highly developed specialist knowledge of social work practice in Children's Services and be registered with Social Work England.
The salary for this Senior Practitioner role is £39,303 to £46,773 per annum.
Duties:
- To safeguard and promote the welfare of young people, giving due consideration to their race, culture, religion and linguistic background.
- To manage an agreed caseload of children and young people in compliance with casework objectives, statutory and departmental policy and procedural requirements, consistently maintaining the highest level of professional standards, including the most complex cases.
- To assess or investigate such cases as are referred, within the department's eligibility criteria, to establish level and type of need.
- To undertake direct social work responsibilities as an allocated worker to the children and young people assigned, investigating concerns regarding a child or young person's safety or wellbeing, make an assessment of the risk and protective factors in the family and decide on the most appropriate course of action.
- Complete longer-term work with families in order to meet identified need and improve outcomes for children.
- To ensure the provision of clear written reports to child protection conferences, reviews, planning meetings and any other purpose as required, ensuring good quality casework analysis and risk assessment is evident throughout.
- To ensure reports are prepared for Court are of high quality, and to support and prepare workers in the Court process, including giving evidence in Court, as required.
- Maintain and update case notes and other records, write reports as required; if required, give evidence in court in relation to care proceedings.
- To ensure the planning and review of statutory work with children and young people is in accordance with statutory regulation and to produce written reports and other documentation for this purpose.
- To provide casework consultation to other social workers in the team as directed by the Team Leader or Head of Safeguarding. May also supervise students, trainees, less experienced professional team members, support staff or volunteers.
- Maintain and update case notes and other records, write reports as required; if required, give evidence in court in relation to care proceedings.
- To prepare and maintain case records and other casework information on the Integrated Children's System (ICS), in accordance with the department's policy and timescales.
- To demonstrate the standards of proficiency as required by the HCPC in order to maintain registration.
- To maintain an awareness of own professional limitations and knowledge gaps. To make effective use of supervision and appraisal as an opportunity to critically reflect on casework and to identify learning and development needs to continually improve upon practice; and to support continual professional development.
- To raise and address (where appropriate) issues of poor practice, internally through the organisation, and then independently if required.
- To work within the organisation's professional policy and procedures and code of conduct.
- To be flexible and able to be deployed in commensurate post across Achieving for Children in line with business need.
- To work effectively with foster carers and others in achieving the best outcomes for all children.
- To participate in the monitoring of service delivery against agreed targets, timescales and resources, taking action as appropriate to achieve desired outcomes.
- To champion and support continuous professional development within the team.
- To ensure effective communications are conveyed in a timely, transparent and coherent manner.
- To keep staff and stakeholders informed of information that affects them and influences service development.
- To establish and maintain good communication across children's social care and with departments and agencies to facilitate the improvement and development of the service.
- To seek, listen to, and respond to the views and ideas of staff and stakeholders, encouraging and actively engaging in positive communications and working relationships.
Requirements of the Senior Practitioner:
- Degree or equivalent in social work
- Current Social Work England registration
- Significant senior level frontline experience within children's services
- Working towards accreditation against the Knowledge and skills statement at practice supervisor level.
- Good understanding of the Children Act 1998/2004 and the Children and Families Act 2014.
- Experience with CIN/CP/LAC
- Experience of working directly with children
- Sound knowledge of relevant legislation, procedures and practice.
- Demonstrate strong organisational ability, including the ability to work on initiative and to prioritise workloads to meet agreed deadlines.
- Provide evidence of your experienced in the use of ICT, including MS Word, Outlook and case record management systems
- Car driver and daily use of a car for business purposes.
Contact:
This Senior Practitioner job is advertised by Lucy Pearson; if you are interested in this position please click above to apply now.
Due to the high volume of applications we receive, regretfully we are only able to respond to candidates who meet our clients' requirements.
