Senior Social Worker - Organisational Safeguarding

With us, you can achieve more - for yourself as well as the vulnerable adults you work to support. We're always looking for new ways to deliver even better services;
Senior Social Workers play an integral role in our preventative approach to Social Care. We encourage our multi-disciplinary teams to share their ideas and experience. We work together to get things done. Bring your positive, proactive attitude, and we'll empower you to make the most of your experience within Essex County Council (ECC) Adult Social Care services.

We are looking for Senior Social Workers to join ECC's Organisational Safeguarding Team within the safeguarding service. The Organisational Safeguarding Team provides supportive, coordinated, and preventative support to addressing provider failure and works with internal and external partners to undertake targeted prevention and skilled assessment of widespread risk in relation to organisational safeguarding.

The successful applicant will be part of a team that will shape how we ensure safeguarding is made personal when applying Care Act thresholds.

In this role, you will demonstrate expert and effective social work practice in complex situations, confidently managing your own caseload while supporting colleagues with challenging cases. You will use your professional expertise to assess, manage and mitigate high levels of risk, ensuring that adults receive timely and proportionate interventions.

Working collaboratively with statutory, non-statutory and voluntary sector partners, you will help ensure a coordinated and joined-up approach to safeguarding and care planning. You will act as a role model for best practice, providing expert advice, guidance and support to colleagues, and contributing to the ongoing development of professional standards across the service.

At Essex County Council Adult Services our mission is clear. We want to make the best and most sustainable use of all resources available to the adult, their families, and carers. To ensure they have access to information and tools to enable them to live healthily and independently for as long as possible, and to exercise choice and control over their lives.

And to ensure the safety, dignity, and quality of life for all the adults we work with. To make sure we achieve our goals, we've transformed our service to be far more proactive. Moving from focusing on long-term care and support, our new model is centred on four key principles - prevention, early intervention, enablement, and safeguarding. We're very proud of our service and the work we're doing with all our partners to build community capacity and resilience.

To apply you should be a qualified social worker with a current Social Work England registration and be post-qualified 3 years as a minimum with an in-depth knowledge of complex cases and The Care Act. You will bring knowledge of safeguarding and will be able to work effectively in a fast-paced environment. You'll be a source of specialist advice and will enable the mitigation of high levels of risk.

You will bring the ability to make clear decisions, to highlight and limit potential risks associated with intervention.

You should have a recognised qualification i.e. PE/BIA/AMPH or currently on the recognised programmes; or has completed an alternative relevant formal learning experience. Furthermore, that social worker is actively applying the qualification to the role of mentoring/developing individuals or groups and can evidence this in practice.

This role involves travelling around Essex and beyond. A driving licence and car - or the ability to meet the mobility requirements of the role through other means - is essential.

In June 2025, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) rated our Adult Social Care services as "Good" with a score of 73%

"The local authority had a good structure and processes in place to enable people to be supported successfully, and support people to remain independent and live healthy lives. The workforce was passionate about supporting people to achieve these outcomes and the local authority had good knowledge of their area, the people living there and the demographics."

You can read the full report on the CQC website here.

Our teams are busy but warm, friendly and supportive. Our fabulous team managers will help you manage your workload and develop your practice.

We take your career just as seriously as you do, and we have a continuing professional development offer…