Adults Social Worker - Early & Wellbeing; West

Mental health social care is transforming into a new operational delivery model improving our early intervention and prevention offer to Essex residents with a focus on people currently not receiving services or falling through existing gaps. The offer is to ensure care act compliance across the system offering information advice and guidance and providing support to improve wellbeing outcomes. Within this service there will be a mixture of the team carrying out direct work alongside people and completing care act assessments relevant to wellbeing outcomes and the completion of care act reviews.

The Early Help & Wellbeing Team is a welcoming, compassionate and innovative team to work in, offering preventative and early help to connect people who are experiencing difficulties with their mental wellbeing and/or neurodivergent conditions to opportunities in their own communities and provide support that enables them to achieve personal ambitions, goals and aspirations.

About the Role We're an adult social care service that wants to see citizens of Essex have as much choice and control over the way they live their lives as possible. We think everyone should have the chance to live a full and fulfilling life with people they love and care about, doing things that matter to them and living in a place they can call home.

We're determined that with the right support, everyone can maintain or achieve some independence and we're proud to be working to make these ambitions a reality. Our Social Workers work alongside people and their families and carers to help them think through what might help them get on with their lives in the way that works best for them. We do this within the framework of our statutory Care Act requirements.

This means many of our conversations are framed as 'assessments', 'reviews', 'support planning' and 'safeguarding'. But our aim is always to listen and understand what matters to the person and then to work with them to think through how this might be achieved. This role is specifically about supporting building pathways and bridging gaps within mental health services through a period of phased implementation.

For a period of time the successful candidate will be expected to work with our partners EPUT and the Primary Care Networks to ensure we are supporting people, and we are building networks and pathways in South Essex throughout the mental health system. This will be alongside working as a social worker within the wider South Early Help and wellbeing team.

Take a look at our short video here to get a glimpse into the role and what it's like to be a Social Worker at Essex County Council.

If you share our vision, enjoy meeting people and hearing their stories you might be interested to find out more about what we do. If you're also an experienced Social Worker registered with Social Work England and post ASYE with that winning combination of creative thought, reliability and practical ability to get things done, we'd really love to hear from you!

You'll have a broad understanding of our statutory responsibilities and a commitment to meeting these in a person-centred way. You may have experience of chairing meetings, and you'll have an ability to develop strong relationships with partner agencies and the local community to provide a supportive framework. Our Social Worker roles involve travelling around Essex. A driving licence and car - or the ability to meet the mobility requirements of the role through other means - is essential.

In February 2025, Greater Essex was accepted onto the Government's devolution priority programme, which will see local authorities in Essex work towards establishing a Mayoral Combined County Authority by May 2026. You can read more about devolution and local government reorganisation (LGR) on our careers site Essex County Council is proud to be a Disability Confident Leader. We're committed to interview all disabled applicants who choose to apply under our Job Interview Scheme if they meet the minimum requirements of the job.

Please speak to our Recruiters if you require any reasonable adjustments during the process. We're also committed to…