Contract Type : Permanent
Salary: Grade H. Scale 29 - £19,313 to Scale 34 - £21,846 (actual salary) with a professional bar at Scale 31- £20,238**
Hours Per Week: 18
Base Location: Ashton Old Library, Old Street, Ashton under-Lyne
Assessment Date : Week commencing 13th January 2025
The Role
This is an exciting opportunity to be a part of a supportive and passionate team of children’s social workers, working hard to achieve and secure permanence for children through adoption within Tameside local authority.
This role is a seconded post, providing the opportunity to also work within the Regional Adoption Agency Adoption Now, made up of local authority adoption teams from Blackburn with Darwen, Bolton, Bury, Oldham, Rochdale and Tameside. Within this, you will be part of a much wider team of social work colleagues. This is a unique opportunity to be a part of both Tameside council but also a wider specialist adoption agency.
This is a case holding post, with a statutory element to this role.
There will be opportunities for working across other work streams within the Regional Adoption Agency, in supporting continued professional development. There is access to lots of training opportunities.
There is a remote working element to this role, but with an expectation of minimum days where you will be office based, both at the Tameside office in Ashton Town Centre and the RAA Hub in the centre of Bolton. This role may also involve some occasional evenings and weekend work.
The key elements of this role, will involve working closely alongside care planning social workers within the local authority, advising and supporting on decision making around plans of adoption.
Family finding for children, seeking to identify matches with adoptive families who can meet the needs of children.
Placing children within their pre adoptive placements and ensuring support is in place and securing legal permanence for them through adoption.
This role does involve extensive report writing and completion of assessments.
Caseloads are managed to facilitate time to complete quality direct work with children in preparing them for their plan of adoption and in supporting continued life story work with children and families.
Support to birth family members is also a crucial part of this role.
About You
This role is perfect for someone with a strong commitment to and who is passionate about achieving the best possible outcomes for looked after children.
You must be a qualified social worker, registered with Social Work England and preferably have post qualifying experience in a statutory child care setting, ideally also including work in an adoption service.
All applicants must have particular strengths in report writing and assessments.
You will need to demonstrate knowledge of relevant legislation, statutory guidance and minimum standards.
You will need to have the ability to manage and prioritise the demands of the role and meet timeframes for children to prevent delay.
About Us
At Tameside, we are committed to ensuring all our Citizens lead long, fulfilling and healthy lives. We are committed to supporting economic growth, providing high quality health and care services, protecting our most vulnerable and creating strong and supportive, self-sufficient communities.
We recognise that our people drive our success and enable the organisation to deliver on its vision, purpose and priorities, and that our people are our most important resource and asset. Our values underpin our practice and behaviours and are at the heart of everything that we do; and we understand that how we do things is just as important as what we do. We pride ourselves on living by our STRIVE values of Support, Trust, Respect, Integrity, Value Diversity and Engage. Our values underpin our practice and behaviours and are at the heart of everything that we do. How we do things are just as important as what we do.
Our employees’ skills, experience and knowledge are essential to our success along with their happiness, wellbeing, commitment, enthusiasm and motivation to be the best they can be.
We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people and adults and expects all staff to share this commitment. This position is subject to Enhanced with Barred List Disclosure Procedures.
All appointments will be to the bottom salary point in the grade with annual incremental progression each April until the grade maximum is reached. Where an individual can provide evidence that their existing salary in a relevant role surpasses the grade starting salary, a higher entry salary will be considered, subject to the professional grade development criteria also being met if that point is higher than the bar point.
** This post is classified as being in a professional job category. As such the grade for the job has a professional grade development bar which employees can progress through subject to meeting the following criteria:
1. Relevant professional qualification for the job role at Level 6 or above, AND
2. Minimum of 2 years post qualification experience in the role, AND
3. Maintained membership of a regulated body where this is a requirement to practice in the role where applicable, AND
4. Professional standards practised to the highest expected level.
This post is a designated customer facing role under the fluency duty and requires a specified level of spoken English.
Unfortunately, at this time we are not able to offer sponsorship.
We are committed to developing a culture which respects individuals, appreciates difference and allows everyone regardless of background to reach their full potential. We are proud to be an accredited disability confident employer. Reasonable Adjustments will be considered in accordance with the Equality Act 2010 in relation to the Job Role Criteria.
Our rewards and benefits package can be viewed here
For further information about this role please contact the recruiting manager on 0161 342 2499 or ruth.rigby@tameside.gov.uk
Reference Number: DPT495
Job Description and Person Specification
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