Contract Type: Permanent

Contract Hours: 37 per week

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

Closing Date: 8th May 2025 at 23:59pm

Blackpool Children’s Services has been on an incredible journey, you could say it’s been a roller coaster! It’s been tough here at times, as we have worked through our OFSTED improvement journey and the intervention from the DFE and such intensive improvement and change has impacted on our workforce.

However, we are now developing a reputation as a good place to practice social work and the DfE’s appointed Commissioner recently recommended removal from DfE intervention. Our latest OFSTED inspection was positive and we are now seeing the positive impact of the hard work undertaken, both for our workforce and for the children and families we serve.

Our services are stable, we have an experienced and committed stable senior leadership team under our new DCS Vicky Gent and are seeing that children and families are now receiving better services.

At the heart of this improvement has been our investment in social work practice and our social workers. Our shared sense of purpose is based upon the Blackpool Families Rock values, culture and practice principals and we are proud this was co-produced with Blackpool’s children, young people, their families and our partnership agencies.

Our teams are small and strengthened by a Supervision Policy which enables a supportive relationship with your manager. We are committed to reducing our caseloads, enabling our social workers to spend time developing trusted relationships with children and their families.

Our staff care about Blackpool’s children and families, and we care about them.

We value that our staff are fully committed and often work above and beyond- we’ve seen that even more during the Pandemic.  In return we therefore offer a flexible approach to working including remote and home working and flexibility with working hours to allow you to meet your own family’s needs too.

If you would like to come and join us on the next stage of this journey please get in touch, you will be guaranteed invaluable experience, a manageable caseload, interesting work and good quality management support.

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
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

to view the Job Description.

Please click here to see the benefits of working for Blackpool Council.

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)

For further information on the health and wellbeing support on offer during your employment, please see here.

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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