Experienced Social Worker

Ready to take the next step in your social work career?

If you’re an experienced children’s social worker looking for a role where your professional judgement is valued, your development is invested in and your practice can genuinely influence the lives of children and families, we’d love to hear from you.

At Cheshire East, we’re doing things differently.

We’re continuing to develop our Children’s Family Help and Social Care service around relationships, strengths, family networks and restorative practice. Our ambition is simple: to work alongside children and families in a way that builds trust, creates meaningful change and keeps children safe and thriving within their families and communities wherever it is safe to do so.

Our Families First approach supports this ambition by bringing earlier, more coordinated help around families and strengthening the way professionals work together. For social workers, this means having greater opportunity to build relationships, understand what matters to families and work creatively to achieve sustainable change.

We know that experienced social workers have choices about where they work. So, if you’re considering your next move, we want to be clear about what you can expect from us.

A practice model that puts relationships at the heart of social work.

is our practice model. We are investing in training and embedding restorative approaches across Children’s Services so that the way we work with children, families and colleagues is consistent with the values of relationship, collaboration, accountability and meaningful change. You won’t simply be told about a practice model when you join – you’ll be supported to understand it, use it and develop your practice through it.

Our Families First approach is strengthening the way we provide support to children, young people and families, with a focus on earlier intervention, partnership working and preventing needs from escalating wherever possible. For social workers, this creates opportunities to work more creatively with families and their networks, build on strengths and bring the right people around the child and family at the right time.

We want families to experience professionals as people who work alongside them, listen to them and help them find sustainable solutions.

As an Experienced Social Worker, you will be trusted to bring your professional expertise to complex work. You will have opportunities to influence practice, support colleagues, contribute to service development and share your experience across the team. We want experienced social workers who are curious, reflective and confident enough to ask, “what could we do differently?” as well as “what do we need to do?”

This is a role for practitioners who want to make a difference to practice as well as to individual children and families.

We want you to continue to grow as a social worker.

You’ll have access to a range of training, development and reflective learning opportunities, alongside regular supervision and support from experienced leaders and practitioners.

We are investing in our workforce because we know that good social work happens when practitioners have the skills, confidence, support and space to think well about their practice.

Whether your ambition is to deepen your practice expertise, develop as a practice educator, move towards leadership or simply become the very best social worker you can be, we want to support your next step.

You will work with children and families where needs are complex and may involve significant safeguarding…