Directorate: People Services, Friends and Family team based within the Fostering Service
Post 1: 37 hours a week
Post 2: Part Time – 3 full days (to include working a Monday)
Contract Type: Permanent
Location: Council House, Derby
The Role:
There are 2 exciting social work opportunities that have arisen within Derby City Council’s family and friends team. We are looking for experienced social workers who have the ambition to join us at this exciting moment, to be part of the Council’s journey and commitment to keeping children within their family networks when it is no longer possible to live with their birth parents.
To achieve this, we are looking for highly skilled experienced social workers who have exceptional assessment skills, to come and join us to ensure that our children receive the highest quality family-based care within extended family. As well as completing detailed and holistic assessments, part of this role will also include supporting Friends and Family carers post order, developing robust support plans, as well as providing support and training individually to carers as well as the wider Friends and Family community of carers.
In addition to the above to meet the recommendations of the Kinship Care strategy and Kinship Care statutory guidance 2024 the part time position (3 days) role will have a focus on working with families post order’s being made, when a SGO or CAO has been granted. Part of this role will be supporting and assessing where there is risk of breakdown (including the need to consider if a single assessment is required) alongside completing needs assessments and ongoing work with partner agencies for the adoption and special guardianship support fund applications for therapeutic service input for children and families.
About You:
We need practitioners who is committed to children achieving good outcomes whilst living with their extended family or friends with an energetic can-do/will do approach then this may be the role for you! You will need to have had experience of working with children and families during and after care proceedings, PLO processes and completing some experiences of fostering/SGO assessments. Strong assessment, analytical and written skills are also required with an eye for creative thinking, strengths base practice and finding achievable solutions. You will need to produce a range of complex, robust, court-ready assessments, in the form of reg 24 fostering assessments, SGO and private fostering assessments, often within tight court timescales. You should feel confident in presenting these reports to court, to fostering panel and SGO panel. You will have a high level of interpersonal relationship-based skills, with an ability to work effectively with colleagues, partners, children, and carers, whilst providing appropriate measures to ensure that the child always remains at the centre of our planning and practice. You have a demonstrable understanding of key legislation, which equips you to analyse and intervene effectively in situations that are increasingly complex and challenging.
If you would like to be part of a dynamic, supportive and expanding team and to contributing to the development of the Friends and Family team in Derby, then this role could be for you! If you have any further questions about the role, please contact the F&F team manager, Betsy Moorley.
Next Steps
If you would like to apply for this vacancy, please submit an application via the Derby City Council website.
The closing date for this vacancy is at midnight on Friday 31 January 2025.. Any applications received after the closing date will not be accepted.
Interviews will be held: Provisional dates 12/13 February 2025
Important Information
Links to the full Job Description and Person Specification are below.
As part of our safer recruitment checks the successful candidate will be subject to an enhanced DBS check.
All employees will normally be appointed to the minimum of the grade for the job.
Before you complete your application form please read our guidance on filling in your application form.
Remember to align your personal statement to the essential criteria in the Person Specification.
Please be aware that where there are colleagues within the organisation who are ‘at risk’ of redundancy, requirements to redeploy to another suitable role will apply and take priority.
Equality, Diversity & Inclusion
We are a fair and inclusive employer and welcome applications from people from all backgrounds. We recruit for diversity and value difference. As many of our roles can now be home-based, we are able to offer more opportunities for people who need this facility.
We are proud to be a Disability Confident Leader. If you are a disabled person, you have the choice to apply under our Guaranteed Interview Scheme so long as you demonstrate that you meet the essential requirements for the job.
We feel it is essential that we recruit a talented workforce that is as diverse as the community we work for.
Please let us know of any individual requirements or reasonable adjustments you may have during the application, interview, or onboarding process and we’ll do all we can to help. We strongly believe in social understanding of disability and for us it’s all about removing barriers to equality.
If you have any questions regarding this vacancy or are having difficulty applying, please contact our Recruitment Team on 01332 640844 (Relay UK – 18001 01332 640 844) or at recruitmentteam@derby.gov.uk. https://www.derby.gov.uk/signing-service/