About Us
We are committed to improving our services for the children and families we support in West Sussex. In May 2023 Ofsted Inspectors praised West Sussex County Council's Children's Services for its 'relentless approach to improving practice,' giving the service an overall rating of 'requires improvement', with 'good' judgements for children in care and leadership and management. The judgements on children needing help and protection and children leaving care are they 'require improvement to be good'.
Inspectors recognised the 'strong, determined and cohesive leadership team' who have made significant improvements since 2019 and their commitment and focus to make further improvements.
For further information about us and about working in Children's Social Care at West Sussex County Council, please visit Careers in children's social work in West Sussex.
The Opportunity
Salary: £28,624 to £31,067 per annum
Working Pattern: Full Time - 37 hours - Monday-Friday 9-5pm
Contract Length: Fixed term
Location: Based at County Hall North, Horsham.
Internal candidates wishing to apply for this role will be considered for a secondment position. Please can you therefore discuss and agree this with your manager before applying for this position.
The Solutions Team are looking to recruit a Child and Family worker on a temporary basis to cover a secondment.
As a Child and Family worker within the Solutions Team, you will work in partnership with other professionals to support and strengthen families in caring for their own children or prepare for and manage a child that has been living in the care of the local authority, to return to live within the family. You will deliver a range of short intensive intervention packages directly with families using a Trauma Informed and Solution Focused approach, which will support the family's aims and build strength in the relationships.
You will be working with families who present as in crisis and often have compassion fatigue, managing emotional wellbeing and support families to spend time together and strengthen or rebuild relationships.
You will develop and offer a creative range of services for children and their families to meet needs as identified e.g. undertaking direct work and purposeful interventions with children, young people, parents, carers, families and groups, and delivering support packages or specific programmes.
You will work within organisational, policy and legislative requirements. You'll need emotional resilience to deal with case work involving families who may present distressing circumstances and or challenging behaviours.
We have teams based in Horsham and Worthing and provide support to families across the whole of West Sussex, with much of the service provision held within the community and in family homes.
About You
To be successful in this role you will:
1. Have significant experience of using a range of direct work interventions in working with children, young people, and their families.
2. Have knowledge and understanding of the development of children and young people, and age-appropriate behaviour.
3. Have good communication and interpersonal skills to communicate successfully both verbally and in writing. You can persuade and successfully convince others of the need to take a specific course of action and being able to gain the trust of service users is essential.
4. Possess the ability to analyse and interpret information, to manage casework with children, young people and their families, ensuring that their needs are assessed, and objectives are set and reviewed.
5. Be able to engage and intervene in partnership, in an empowering way with children, young people, their families and other external agencies to effect positive and lasting change and to provide advice and guidance as required.
6. Be able to prioritise and manage your own workload, to meet agreed deadlines, whilst working towards clear goals. Being able to reflect on your own practice and learn from experience is also important.
7. Sound and accurate IT skills, including report writing, maintaining accurate records, ensuring confidentiality, and protecting information.
8. You will need to be able to travel independently around the county, including to areas that may not be easily accessible by public transport. Pool cars and pool bikes are available.
For more information on the Key Skills as well as the Qualifications and/or experience required, please refer to the Job Description attached.
Rewards and Benefits
As an employer we recognise that it is our employees that are central to everything we do. We aim to create a supportive and dynamic working environment where employees can achieve their full potential, achieve a healthy work-life balance and are rewarded for the work they do.
In addition to working within a great team and a brilliant opportunity you will receive:
For a full list of the benefits offered to you as a West Sussex County Council employee you can find them on our Rewards and Benefits page.
Further Information
The reference number for this role is CAFHE05656.
For an informal conversation or for further information regarding the role, please contact Megan Harper. For issues or queries regarding your application please contact the HR department.
To apply, please follow the links below to upload your CV and cover letter. In your cover letter outline your motivations for applying and explain how you meet the key skills listed in full and the experience you can bring to the role (please refer to the key skills) ensuring that any gaps in employment are covered in your CV. Please ensure you have saved the job description attached to the main advert on our website as, once the job has closed, you may not have the opportunity to download again.
We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults. This post is subject to a DBS check, 5 years referencing and a health check.
Equity, inclusion and accessibility is very important to West Sussex County Council. We welcome and encourage applications from everyone, as this helps us build a diverse and talented workforce, that reflects the communities we serve. We ensure our approach to recruitment is flexible and supportive to enable all applicants to be at their best and to ensure they have the best possible chance of success.
We operate a guaranteed interview scheme for applicants that have a disability, are a veteran or are a care leaver. More information can be found on our application help page.
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