Contract: Permanent

Hours: 37 hours per week

Salary: Grade H1/H2 SCP 27-35 £37,035 - £44,711 per annum

Closing Date: 4th February 2025 at 23:59

An opportunity has arisen for a permanent Social Worker in the Connected Care / Special Guardianship Team. We are preferably looking for a candidate with experience in permanency planning for children and that has good assessment writing skills. You will be joining a very settled, supportive and experienced connected care team. We specialise in assessing and supporting family and connected carers until permanency plans are made.  

You will receive regular support, supervision and make use of an extensive training and development programme for our team members. 

We are a busy and supportive team, we undertake initial viability assessments, full dual assessments and   Regulation 24 assessments. We work closely with all services within children’s social care to ensure the best outcomes for our children. 

The role in particular will be undertaking full dual assessments of connected people within the realms of care planning for children. As part of this role you would be expected to support our families through the process of being assessed and work closely with the child’s social worker in order to achieve the best outcomes for a child. Our team completes private special guardianship assessments but predominately our assessments are ordered through public law proceedings and therefore, we work to the timescales set by the court. Your work will involve working closely with our colleagues across services and ensuring that we are providing specialist expertise and knowledge to our families on first point of contact. You will work closely with your team manager and support the transfer of cases where contingent carers have been identified. Whilst our dual assessments will be your prime focus, you will support the duty social worker to undertake viability assessments and regulation 24 assessment of contingent carers at times also.

Blackpool Council welcomes applications from all the community.

You must be registered with Social Work England 

Interviews :

What we offer

• Pay: our salary offer is strong and candidates who are recruited from the same or similar role may be eligible for a salary match within the above salary banding
• Genuine flexible working: family-friendly patterns such as flexible start/finish times and state of the art technology support, so you can spend some time working from home.
• Small teams, clear line management and practice development support
• Caseloads: they’re going down, they’re manageable, varied and appropriate to your role. 
• Easy and regular access to the senior leadership team & Principal Social Worker
• Social Work England registration fee is paid
• 26 days’ annual leave (rising to 28 after 5 yrs & 32 days after 10 yrs) and the option to buy an additional 5 days on top of that, via salary sacrifice. 
• Encouragement to take your TOIL back – we mean it!
• Supervision: our strengthened supervision policy supports you to build a trusting relationship with your manager. 
• Leadership is ‘good’ and ‘stable’ – DfE apppinted Independent Commissioner.
• Career development is focused on supporting your development.
• Relocation support up to £8,000 (where eligible)
• Blackpool Council Staff benefit scheme: Social Work Benefits and Diversity | Next Step Blackpool
• Employee Assistance Programme, to support you through challenging times e.g. with free counselling, financial or legal advice.
• Mental Health First Aiders that are here for you
• Principal Social Worker Best Practice Awards are our way of saying ‘thank you’ to our amazing and committed staff.

It all adds up to an exciting package. 

If you'd like to discuss this role further please contact Louise.Pearson@blackpool.gov.uk

The Council operates an Introduce a Friend Scheme for a small number of agreed jobs in Children’s and Adults Services which encourages our Blackpool Council employees to initiate a successful introduction.  This job is one of those roles, therefore if you have received a recommendation from a friend please ensure you select ‘Introduce a Friend’ when asked on the application where you heard about the vacancy.

to view the Job Description.

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We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children/vulnerable adults. This post is subject to satisfactory reference history of at least two years, Disclosure & Barring Service (DBS) check, medical clearance, evidence of any essential qualifications and proof of Right to Work in the UK in accordance with the Asylum and Immigration Act 1996.

This post is exempt from the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act and amendments to the exemptions order, which mean that certain offences are ‘protected’ and do not need to be disclosed, guidance on the "filtering" of offences can be found at New filtering rules for DBS certificates (from 28 November 2020 onwards) - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

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Have you got what it takes to ride the Roller Coaster ride of Social Work in Blackpool? for further information on the career path and development opportunities available at Blackpool please see here.

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