Senior Practitioner – Childrens & Families HUB, North

Permanent,Full Time

£48,205 to £57,988 per annum (full time equivalent)

Location:

Colchester

Working Style:

Fixed-base worker

Closing Date: 22nd September 2026 at 23:59

Interview Date: 25th October 2026

Please note that visa sponsorship is not available for this role. Applicants must have a current, unrestricted right to work in the UK.

Here in Essex, we continue to raise the bar about practice and our investment in our workforce is second to none. It’s an exciting time to join us having received our 2nd Outstanding Ofsted rating in a row.

To read more about our business area, please visit:
Children & Families

Please take a look at our‘No Magic’ Children & Families video

Children & Families Hub

Based in Colchester, the Children & Families Hub is the single point of contact for members of the public and professionals to raise concerns about the welfare and safety of children or make a referral.

Children and Families is recognised as a service in which social work can develop and prosper, with a culture of collaboration, integrity, and compassion;promoting development and wellbeing of children, young people, and their families; protecting them from neglect and abuse. Working together with partners delivering a range of early help, family support and effective social work interventions which build resilience, remove barriers, and enable children and young people to look forward to a brighter future.

The Senior Practitioner role provides leadership in the team, providing both support and mentoring to Social Workers and Alternatively Qualified staff and deputising for the Team Managers when needed. They will oversee the quality and timely progression of Early Help and Social Work triage undertaken by staff at the Hub. The Senior Practitioner role is key in undertaking quality assurance activities to ensure the best possible service is offered to children and families in Essex.

There will be good opportunities for your own professional development and for being part of developing our team and service. There is an ethos of openness to the development of new ideas, particularly to reinforce our relationship based focus, both with our service users and within the staff group.

The successful candidate will be expected to bring skill and high standards of social work to their own work as well as providing modelling, advice and support to colleagues. They will be committed to systemic, relationship based social work, providing effective, innovative interventions and with the ability to build good partnerships, both with our external partners and within the organisation.

• Responsible for providing a source of expert advice and professional supervision for social workers and alternatively qualified staff; contributing to the development of practice standards.
• Accountable for working within the statutory legal framework, policy and guidance and determining when the threshold for statutory intervention has been reached.
• Responsible for maintaining accurate, timely and robust oversight of Requests for Support, ensuring that contacts and early help triage steps are reviewed, progressed and concluded within statutory and local timescales.
• Builds strong effective working relationships across the Council, with partners and members of voluntary agencies to help people get the best start in life and age well.
• Delivers a high level of expertise in particular areas of practice and leads on those areas, contributing to the development.
• Specific individual and shared targets and objectives are defined annually within the performance management framework.

• A recognised social work qualification i.e., Diploma, degree…