Senior Social Worker - Fostering Kinship

Our client Surrey council is looking for a Senior Social Worker to join their Fostering Kinship Team.

• Triage contacts to the service to determine if they meet the threshold for a statutory social work assessment of significant impairment or harm.
• Provide an assessment of family members’ needs, strengths, and risks to children’s health and development, and develop SMART plans to meet those needs.
• Work with partners to meet needs and monitor progress through child-in-need and core group meetings involving families, young people and relevant professionals.
• Conduct child protection investigations where a multi‑agency strategy determines significant harm, involving families in developing change plans that reduce risk and keep children in family where possible.
• Initiate discussions for S20 orders or planned/emergency legal proceedings when children cannot be adequately cared for in the family and the significant harm threshold is reached.
• Collaborate with commissioning, fostering and adoption teams to identify high‑quality placements, promote keeping siblings together, and engage in timely care planning to place children in stable long‑term homes.
• Take professional responsibility for managing a caseload of individuals, children, families and carers, supporting them to identify needs and plan support using a full range of options.
• Demonstrate confident judgement about risk and accountability in decision‑making.
• Use assessment procedures proportionately to maximise participation and ensure proportionate assessments.
• Provide information, advice and guidance in line with current national legislation, and signpost to other agencies, services or providers as appropriate.
• Understand forms of harm and identify safeguarding concerns; undertake safeguarding assessment and planning.
• Share and present professional knowledge and expertise within the team, and, where appropriate, provide professional reflective supervision to non‑qualified staff.

• Full registration with Remedy for all locum positions.
• Successful applicants will undertake an Enhanced Disclosure via the DBS.

Our objective is to be an equal opportunities employer and we welcome applications from everyone with suitable skills and ability regardless of race, colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin, gender, disability, sexual orientation, age, religion or belief. All applications will be accepted and reviewed solely on merit.