About The Job
Salary: £46,731 to £49,764 per annum
Working Pattern: Full time, 37 hours per week
Contract Type: Permanent
Location: Chichester
Interview Date: 12th May 2025
We have an exciting opportunity for a Senior Social Work Practitioner (SSWP) to join our Chichester Community Team. This is a permanent, full-time role offering variety, supervision support, and the chance to work within a genuinely collaborative team.
As a Senior Social Work Practitioner, you’ll support the Team Manager in delivering high-quality, strengths-based practice. You’ll play a key role in mentoring and supervising colleagues, managing complex cases, and ensuring high standards across assessments and care planning.
You’ll need a strong working knowledge of the Care Act 2014, the Mental Capacity Act 2005, and experience in applying these in practice. You should also bring a commitment to the strengths-based model—empowering people to meet their outcomes using their own capabilities, family support, and local community assets, alongside funded care where appropriate.
What You’ll Be Doing
1. Supporting the Team Manager in day-to-day operations
2. Supervising and mentoring team members
3. Chairing Best Interest Meetings
4. Quality assuring assessments and reviews with a strengths-based focus
5. Promoting and supporting staff wellbeing
6. Contributing to complaint resolution and continuous service improvement
You will be a confident and empathetic communicator—capable of managing expectations, delivering difficult messages sensitively, and finding alternative solutions in line with our approach. Experience in a supervisory role (or strong foundations and training in supervision) is essential.
You’ll also be committed to upholding strong social work values and supporting both qualified and unqualified staff.
Please feel free to contact Jo Boylin directly if you would like more information on the role.
Experience and Skills
Please ensure you cover how you meet the following qualifications and experience within your application:
• A Degree in Social Work or a recognised equivalent Social Work qualification e.g., Diploma in Social Work.
• A recognised post qualifying award in Social Work (e.g., Practice Educator, Best Interest Assessor and/or Approved Mental Health Professional) or demonstrable evidence of continuous professional development at a similar level.
• Registered with Social Work England.
• Experience of undertaking assessments in complex situations and social work intervention planning, implementation, and review by means of creative and pragmatic solutions.
• Extensive experience of working in partnership with those who access the service and maintaining a focus on the needs and strengths of the people, and the outcomes they want to achieve, whilst handling conflict and disagreement.
• Experience of managing risk within a risk enablement approach.
• Excellent, up-to-date working knowledge of relevant legislation e.g., Care Act
(2014), Mental Capacity Act (2005) etc.
• Requirement for BIA qualified practitioners to contribute to BIA service
delivery, AMHP qualified practitioners to contribute to AMHP service delivery.
• Valid, full driving licence. Desirable
*Please read the role profile for the required key skills for this role as they also need to be covered within your application
Rewards and Benefits
For a full list of the benefits offered to you as a West Sussex County Council employee you can find them on our page.