Social Worker - Children in Care

Care job family overview:

Support and assist the well-being of individuals and groups to assure their protection, security and development.

Safeguarding, protection and care.

Community, residential, day or field settings.

Ongoing risk/needs assessment of and advice for individuals/groups.

Specification of any non-council provision.

Individual or small group emphasis.

May involve personal care activities.

Likely to involve immediate response to client.

The overall responsibilities of the service/function are:

Operational children’s services are structured in dedicated function teams in order to improve delivery and outcomes for children, young people and families and to evidence this through performance and achievement of set standards.

• Multi Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH)
• Safeguarding and Assessment Services
• Care & Placement Services

The Safeguarding and Assessment team is part of our exciting new structure and the team works with some of our most vulnerable children in Wiltshire including children in need, children in need of protection, children who are the subject of family proceedings and a proportion of our looked after children, providing a high quality, efficient and effective social work service to respond to the needs of vulnerable children, young people and their families.

Post holders will be responsible for:

• Completing assessments, planning, delivering and reviewing focused interventions in a timely manner in order to safeguard and protect vulnerable children and promote positive outcomes.
• Working within and implementing the duties and responsibilities of relevant.
• Child care legislation, associated regulations and guidance and national and departmental policies and procedures.
Achieving improved “Every Child Matters” outcomes for children and young people.

Specific duties and responsibilities include:

To manage and supervise a caseload of approved mainstream and family and friends foster carers across Wiltshire to ensure safe and high quality foster placements are offered and provided to Wiltshire’s looks after children.

To operate within the council policy and keep up to date with social work methods, practice developments, new legislation and procedures, including the Children’s Act 2004, Every Child Matters and Care Matters agenda.

To be responsible for the day to day interpretation of and implementation of statutory duties and departmental policy and procedures in the provision of services to children and young people.

To be allocated work from the team manager or any person delegated to act on their behalf based on eligibility criteria and to hold case management responsibility for this work.

To complete enquiries and assess, the needs of and risks to vulnerable children and young people in a timely manner giving due consideration to the wishes and views of the child and the child’s family. This will include the completion of S47 enquiries, single assessments and engaging service users and other relevant persons in the work base, homes or any other appropriate venue e.g. hospital, school etc.

To take appropriate action to assess and minimise any identified concern or risk to children/young people in accordance with the requirements and timescales of assessment frameworks, child protection procedures and looked after children legislation and procedures.

To draw up and implement, with the child/young person and their family/carers, an appropriate plan to address identified issues and to maximise the participation of service users and carers in this process ensuring that social work intervention is ongoing only when necessary in people’s lives.

To carry out regular reviews of individual plans, record outcomes and formulate revised plans which are outcome focused.

To convene meetings e.g. core groups to assist in the implementation and review of plans for vulnerable children.

To write reports for child protection conferences, planning meetings, looked after children reviews, legal meetings and court hearings and attend these as appropriate.

To have a creative approach to meeting need and to ensure local provision, wherever possible,…