Contract Type: Permanent
Hours: 37 hours per week
Salary: Grade H3 SCP 36-40 £42,503 – £46,549
Closing date: June 11th 2023 at 23:59
Proposed Interview Date: June 22nd 2023
We are revolutionising the way we work within Children’s Services. We’re looking for talented and passionate individuals who want to succeed in helping us to achieve a better future for children and families and a great opportunity has arisen to join the Practice Development Service.
The service consists of 4 Practice Development Leaders and a Senior Practice Development Leader who work with the Principal Social Worker to support our workforce across the Children and Families Service, implementing our unique model of practice ‘Blackpool Families Rock’ and the new ‘Working Well with Families across Lancashire’ principals.
Based upon our learning from our strong ASYE Programme of Support, this service will develop an Academy approach to support Children & Families Service workforce and a Social Work post graduate Continual Professional Development, in accordance with Social Work England’s Knowledge and Skills Statements (KSS).
The Service
- Supports practitioners to implement learning from a range of quality assurance methods, celebrates and shares good practice examples via a range of methods.
- Works in partnership with our Human Resource colleagues, taking a lead in organising all recruitment processes, supporting staff who are absent from work in their return
- Supports individual staff and teams practice development through mentoring and reflective discussions
- Reflects on learning from complaints using a restorative methodology and develop Policies and Procedures to clearly reflect new ways of working
Candidate requirements
To apply you need to be a qualified social worker with significant experience of working within statutory Children’s Social Care. You will need to have experience in developing and delivering training and have the ability and credibility to work alongside our Children & Families Service to support others’ in their learning.
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.
We’ve strengthened our recruitment process too – You’ll get a quick response to any expression of interest and application. We offer regular virtual interview days and we will keep in contact with you from the day you are offered a role to your first day with us.
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.