Duty Social Worker - Mental Health

Overview

The Older People's Mental Health Social Work Team is a multi-disciplinary team supporting older adults experiencing severe and enduring mental health difficulties. Our Social Workers are highly valued, we provide legal expertise and a social perspective to the multidisciplinary team, ensuring that supported individuals receive a recovery-focused and holistic service to support their recovery and wellbeing while playing a vital role in:

• Providing guidance, expertise, and a strong social care perspective.
• Delivering care coordination and safeguarding leadership.
• Ensuring a recovery-focused, strengths-based and integrated approach.
• Supporting individuals to exercise choice, maintain independence, and live fulfilled lives while managing risk to their wellbeing.

Social Work input is aimed at recognising people's strengths, enabling people to exert choice and to live fulfilled lives, whilst supporting them to minimise risks to their wellbeing. We pride ourselves on our strong culture of support within the team and colleagues are willing to share knowledge, support, and experience. We are a small and supportive team who meet up regularly in person to support the connections within the team and to support each other in our wellbeing and development.

The post's main base will be at Newtown Centre, Huntingdon. However, it will be possible for the post holder to spend time at different sites across the county as well as to work from home regularly. We value our colleagues in Cambridgeshire County Council and have developed a number of benefits in addition to the basics like annual leave, sick pay, pension and mileage…

• A comprehensive wellbeing package to cover all aspects of wellbeing, both in and out of work, which can also be accessed by your family.
• 6 days of protected time each year to support in maintaining your Continuous Professional Development.
• A relocation package of up to £8,000 (eligibility applies).
• A pay progression scheme to enable you to accelerate through the pay grade as you gain experience and skills.
• A Refer a Friend Scheme where if you refer another Social Worker to us who is subsequently employed by us as a result of that introduction, we'll pay you an introduction fee of £350.
• Access to development opportunities, apprenticeships and qualified coaches to support your personal and professional growth.

For more information and to see our other benefits, take a look at the benefits brochure attached to this advert.

• Triage new referrals in partnership with Social Work Managers.
• Work with older adults with complex and diverse mental health needs, including those known to secondary, specialist and forensic services.
• Complete Care Act assessments and reviews, including complex safeguarding work.
• This includes completing multidisciplinary S117 reviews as well as pursuing joint support agreements with the ICB.
• Manage enquiries when allocated Social Workers are absent, determining urgency and required action.
• Respond to urgent referrals (as agreed with Social Work Managers), including visits, assessments and support planning.
• Facilitate timely transfer of cases from duty to community teams.
• Provide social work expertise and consultation to colleagues across health and social care.
• Work collaboratively in multi‑disciplinary settings, including ward liaison and discharge planning.
• Develop your skills in reflective practice and social work models within mental health.

This is a fast‑paced and rewarding role offering excellent opportunities to develop your professional expertise.

Our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy, along with our employee network "IDEAL" and self‑organised peer support groups help us to foster an inclusive, supportive and safe working environment where people feel valued, respected, and empowered. We collect relevant diversity data for monitoring as part of the recruitment process to understand the diversity of our applicants and monitor any trends throughout the recruitment processes so that we can take meaningful action.

If you are an experienced and dedicated Social Worker looking to develop your career within the inspiring and rewarding field of mental…