Senior Practitioner - Families Together

Job title:           Senior Practitioner - Families Together

Department:    Children’s Services

Location:           Croydon Council (CR0)

Grade / Salary: Grade 15; £49,890 - £51,903 + £5,000 welcome payment + £2,500 retention payment

Hours of work:  36 per week / Monday – Friday

Contract type:   Permanent

With a service restructure at Croydon Council, we are proud to announce we have a range of new opportunities for qualified Social Workers to take the next step in their career – could this opportunity be the next move for you?  

The Opportunity

We have an exciting opportunity for a Senior Social Worker, registered with Social Work England, to join our Edge of Care Team. You will be working closely with colleagues in CAMHS and Croydon University Hospital to support young people presenting in crisis to enable children to be discharged from hospital appropriately and safely.

To help achieve this, we are expanding our team and want to recruit a permanent Senior Social Worker who is experienced and passionate about supporting and managing practice which achieves positive change for children and families. This is an exciting opportunity to apply your experience to complex direct family work whilst also managing, supporting and developing the practice of the team.

Why join us?

In Croydon, our Children's Services are on a high-spirited change journey, with new management, innovative approaches and considerable pace.

We are committed to delivering excellent social work practice and services to our children and families. Over the past two years, the team has developed a model of working with families grounded in relationally based, trauma informed and systemic applications of practice. We have been able to demonstrate strong and successful outcomes against our objectives which evidences that our work has enabled many families to stay together and prevent adolescents from entering care. This success has led to further developing the team including the addition of a number of new posts.

The Edge of Care Team work with adolescents and their families where there is a risk of the child entering the care system. We also work to reunify children back home to their families after a period of being looked after. The team has recently moved to the newly formed Young Croydon Service which is at an exciting time of co-creating a service which meets the needs of adolescents through strong and collaborative partnership, family and community engagement. Families Together offers an intensive service to families who are in crisis and where there is a high risk context. We are driven by a value that all families have innate abilities, strengths and resilience. We work with families to create new stories, build connections and reduce risk/distress.

Families together is a fast paced team where responsiveness, adaptability and flexibility are key. It involves building effective and collaborative professional relationships with partners, families and young people quickly and often in the most challenging of circumstances.

This is an exciting opportunity for someone keen to broaden and develop their systemic skill set; contribute further to the development of a successful team in a new service and become part of a team committed to improving outcomes for children and families in Croydon. This role would suit someone wanting to start or continue their management journey whilst also retaining a strong link to direct work and practice.

Benefits of Working With Us

• Welcome payment of £5,000
• Retention payment of £2,500
• A pension scheme with an average employer contribution of 20%
• 31 days’ annual leave in addition to Bank Holidays
• Accredited Systemic Practice training 
• A range of CPD opportunities to support your development
• Career Progression Scheme from Social Worker to Advanced Social Worker
• Manageable caseloads
• Investment into your staff well-being
• Good management support for practitioners, regular supervision, and access to a clinical therapist to support your work
• Will have the opportunity to work from home and work flexibly which provides you with more of a work-life balance.

About you

We are therefore looking for candidates who have the ability to:

• Support, deliver and supervise structured interventions that enable families to develop strengths and skills, build resilience and achieve positive, sustainable behaviour change.
• Deliver and supervise a range of interventions which are evidence based and informed using ideas from systemic practice, motivational interviewing, solution focused and trauma informed practice models
• Deliver and supervise intervention and responses to families in the context of crisis and imminent family breakdown which focus on their safety and an immediate reduction of risk
• Work restoratively with a strong emphasis on supporting families to build connection and improve relationships between them. This involves helping families to develop shared goals for improving relationships, exploring communication and conflict resolution to avoid family breakdown
• Make assessments in high risk contexts, implement plans and review accordingly
• Support the work of the Team Manager in a variety of ways including team development, supervision, screenings, consultations, chairing of large meetings and attendance at key meetings/panels
• Influence and build upon the performance of a multi-skilled team, ensuring that cases are allocated effectively in terms of skills and experience suited to the complexity of the case.  
• Candidates will need to have a minimum of three years post qualifying experience, including in a statutory child care setting. Prior adolescent, mental health or therapeutic experience is useful but not essential.
• Candidates will need to be able to demonstrate good experience, knowledge and skills of working with families via a relationally based practice model; being able to work with a complex and diverse range of needs and risks; and contributing to positive outcomes for young people and families.
• Candidates will need to have good knowledge and understanding of systemic and trauma informed practice ideas, relevant research and national developments, and policies relating to children’s social care.

If you would like an informal conversation about this role please contact Lucy Sullivan (Team Manager) at lucy.sullivan@croydon.gov.uk