About Gateshead Council
At Gateshead, our vision is that all children and families, regardless of their background, are at the heart of everything we do – ensuring all children can thrive and meet their full potential.
Our plans for 2024 reflect this vision and ambition! We will have an even greater focus on embedding trauma informed approaches, and inclusive practice, across all of our services as we believe that this delivers the best outcomes for children and young people. We are committed to continuing to develop services which are integrated and joined up through our family hubs and that we maintain our focus on supporting the most vulnerable children on the edge of care to support them to remain safely living within their family networks.
In 2023 we were recognised nationally for the great work we are doing. Our Kinship team won the CYPS award for the team making the biggest impact, our Social Work Academy received a commendation and came second in the CYPS biggest impact award, and one of our NQSW was shortlisted in the best newcomer award.
We also won the Gold award for ‘Digital Transformation in Social Work Award’ based on the Digital Me films that were made by young people in both the Domestic abuse and Youth justice services. These really are excellent and are a testament to our young people and the teams who work with them and support them.
Plus, two of our foster carers won the CYPS foster carer award supported by their Fostering Social Work Practitioner.
During 2023 we were also successful in bidding for and achieving a number of grants to develop new services for children and young people which includes piloting the new national DFE Family Network pilot; Turnaround funding to support young people at risk of entering the criminal justice system; and the Family Links programme for children in care.
Do you want to come and be part of our award winning, ambitious and innovative teams?
We are currently recruiting to a Social Worker roles in Contextual safeguarding
Do you love working with Teenagers? Gateshead Contextual Safeguarding Team are looking to recruit an experienced and motivated Social Worker to join our expanding team.
The team consists of adolescent Social workers, Edge of Care workers, homeless prevention worker and a Specialist exploitation Workers. The team specialises in harm outside the home and our edge of care workers offer intensive support alongside both social workers and families to prevent teenagers coming into care and empowering families to create their own network of support.
Social workers work alongside our homeless prevention worker and exploitation worker to provide additional support for families. The team is co-located with our brand-new Trauma informed service (Trusting hands Gateshead) this is a team of specialist health professions which include speech and language therapists, psychologists, specialist nurse practitioners who work alongside our team. The team have a weekly multi-agency systemic unit meeting and peer mapping with the Police which gives the opportunity for joint peer reflection on families we are supporting and the worries we may be facing as a team.
To be a part of this amazing team, you must be passionate about working with teenagers. Sadly many of the teenagers we work alongside have or are suffering from mental health issues, exploitation, both criminal and sexual, trauma and fractured family environments. As a result, this means that the job is both demanding and challenging but the reward and satisfaction of making the lives of teenagers in our local area safer far outweigh these. You need to be a qualified social worker, registered with Social Work England and an enhanced DBS would be required but you already knew that, whilst that is important, what we think is equally as important is the ability to engage with teenagers, the ability to manage risk and be calm under pressure.
What can a career with Gateshead offer?
By pursuing your career with Gateshead, we can guarantee you will have:
* A stable senior leadership team that listens and cares about you and your work
* A culture which takes pride in and actively celebrates social work.
* Excellent opportunities for career progression, whether you are a newly qualified social worker completing your assessment and supported year in employment with the support of our Social Work Academy, or a more experienced social worker looking to broaden your experience in order to step into management with the support of our Management and Leadership Programme
* Your base in the same building as all social work teams, allowing support not just from your allocated team but all services.
* Hybrid working – both working from the office base and home working
* A protected time employee induction scheme.
Also as an employee of Gateshead Council you will benefit from:
* A generous annual leave package of 28 days, increasing to 30 days following 5 years’ service. You will also have the opportunity to purchase up to 10 days extra leave via our Annual Leave Salary Sacrifice Scheme.
* Access to the flexi scheme which allows for working a 9 days over 10
* Excellent training and development opportunities
* Great transport links with the use of reliable and frequent public transport and have access to a discounted Annual Pass. You will also have use of Co-wheel pool cars and access to the Cycle to Work salary sacrifice scheme
* Being a member of the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS)
* Eligibility to access a range of other staff offers and discounts via our employee discount portal.
During the selection process candidates will be assessed against the essential criteria as set out in the job profile.
If successful you will be required to apply for an enhanced disclosure.
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