Social Worker - Exploitation & Aspiring Futures; Hybrid

Social Worker - Aspiring Futures (Fixed term for 12 months) -

Grade: G9;
Salary Range: £42,839 - £46,142

An exciting opportunity has arisen for the appointment of a social worker specialising in working with children and young people who are exploited to join our Aspiring Futures Team on a 12‑month fixed term basis.

Walsall Children’s Social Care have created a service for exploited young people, with exploited young people. We have listened to what our exploited young people, families and professionals have said about what is needed and created a model of working based on this. Collectively, we are incredibly proud of what has been created and the positive impact the team have had with our exploited young people in Walsall.

The Aspiring Futures team consists of a Team Manager, Assistant Team Manager, Social Workers, Aspiring Futures Practitioners and Exploitation Coordinators. No matter where a young person is within their social care journey, they will have one Aspiring Futures Practitioner or Street Team’s practitioner who will work in a relational, trauma‑informed way to seek to reduce the exploitation risks, alongside a social worker within Aspiring futures or locality family help teams.

The model is based on rational practice and ensuring consistency of practitioners, enabling a rapport to be built which brings the ability to gather greater, more rich and vital information that not only contributes to keeping that young person safe, but supports mapping of all exploitation risks across Walsall. We actively attend and advocate for our young people in all statutory meetings and contribute to wider planning, having an in‑depth understanding of our young people, the push and pull factors, behaviours and who they are as individuals.

We work closely with partner agencies, including but not limited to:
Police, Street Teams, the Youth Justice Service, Education, Health, the Violence Reduction Partnership, Mentoring Services, Detached Youth Work Services, and Voluntary Organisations. We undertake MACE (Multi‑Agency Child Exploitation) Meetings on a monthly basis for all our high‑risk young people.

Daily Exploitation Triage is currently in place and oversees all age exploitation and missing episodes and is attended by partner agencies. This is chaired by the Team Manager or Assistant Team Manager on rotation.

The same offer which we deliver to our high risk exploited young people is delivered to our medium risk exploited young people by Street Teams, who we work seamlessly alongside. Our low risk exploited young people have their needs met through our internal Youth Worker offer.

As a social worker within the Aspiring Futures team, you would be working with a reduced number of young people who are being exploited, in order to enable you to work more intensively with the young person and their family, working alongside them to understand their needs and lived experiences of the young person in relation to exploitation and contextual safeguarding utilising context weighting, whilst considering and understanding wider vulnerabilities and protective factors.

Social workers within Aspiring Futures work with young people from the start of their journey with social care, and work with young people considered at medium or high risk of exploitation identified through our daily exploitation triage.

The Our Family assessments and Exploitation Risk Reduction assessments completed by the social workers and Aspiring futures practitioners within the team support in identifying and analysing the extra‑familial and contextual risks the young person is experiencing alongside the familial risks and protective factors. This is achieved through the use of specific prompts and questions throughout the assessment process and direct work tools, enabling the practitioner to gain a greater understanding of how the young person interacts with the wider contexts around them and what risks this may pose to them.

The assessment process enables practitioners to build an understanding of the young person and family and their wider contexts by gathering a range of information about what has happened…