Contract Type: Permanent
Hours: 37hrs
Salary: H3 £42,503 – £46,549
Closing date: 20th February at 23:59
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.
Supporting Our Children Service
Senior social workers in Supporting Our Children lead by example. They are committed and passionate about improving outcomes for our children. You will have the experience and skills to mentor, support and develop less experienced members of the team to become great social workers. You will co work complex cases and we will endeavour to keep your caseload at a manageable level to enable you to do this. You will support your team manager with team development, ASYE progression, as well as working with our Practice Development Lead on whole service learning events. You will have the opportunity to develop your own skills and experience and we will support you with any training needs that you may require. Our service wants passion, commitment, enthusiasm and a real drive to improve.
For further information please contact Julie McClements via Julie.mcclements@blackpool.gov.uk or 01253 477 441, or Hannah Eccles on Hannah.eccles@blackpool.gov.uk or 01253 477 527
This is a fantastic opportunity for an experienced Social Worker looking for a more specialist role or take their first step into management.
We are committed to our Senior Social Workers having a reduced caseload and support you to become an accredited Practice Educator. You will have the time to support other social workers to develop and opportunities to develop your own specialism of work, such as neglect, domestic abuse, child sexual abuse, trauma informed practice and pre-birth assessments.
What we offer
- Pay: our salary offer is strong with an additional £2,000 golden hello for experienced social workers 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
- 25 days’ annual leave (rising to 27 after 5 yrs & 31 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 appointed 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 two year reference history, Disclosure & Barring Service (DBS) check, medical clearance, evidence of any essential qualifications and proof of legal working in accordance with the Asylum and Immigration Act 1996.