As an Advanced Practitioner within Dorset Council’s Fostering Team, you will have the opportunity to provide professional clinical leadership in the delivery of fostering services. You will be integral in improving outcomes for children, young people, and their families, applying best practice across complex cases and fostering development. Your expertise will shape the fostering practice within the Children’s Services directorate, influencing how services are delivered and improving professional standards across the team. You will be actively involved in supporting social workers, NQSWs, and managers, helping to reinvigorate social work and enhance the impact on children and young people's lives. Dorset Council offers excellent professional development opportunities, including training, mentoring, and reflective supervision. You will be part of a supportive team where your expertise and contributions are valued, and you will have the chance to work on high-profile cases, develop best practices, and be a leader in fostering service delivery. Key Responsibilities: provide professional clinical leadership to deliver improved outcomes for children, young people, and their families, integrating national, regional, and international best practice initiatives work with the Principal Social Worker, training teams, and Bournemouth University to develop and deliver the Reinvigorating Social Work and Early Help programmes provide high-level clinical expertise on complex cases, such as child sexual exploitation investigations and complex court proceedings deliver expert assessments for court through the Family Assessment Specialist team support, evaluate, and provide training to managers on the delivery of reflective, qualitative supervision for social workers and relevant staff manage the workflow within social work caseloads to ensure timely and appropriate responses to children and young people’s needs attend court and other relevant meetings as required in relation to care proceedings and complex casework chair and support meetings, ensuring social workers are adequately supported through complex casework provide leadership in delivering induction processes, supporting NQSWs, and identifying common themes across the directorate for joint training initiatives ensure compliance with data inputting, case recording, and confidentiality issues, alongside the team manager and operational manager conduct case audits for individual social workers, participating in safeguarding and other audits lead on Dorset Council’s response to lessons learned from serious case reviews, ensuring that issues are addressed to improve practice and outcomes participate in recruitment and staff development with the operational manager ensure knowledge of all relevant legislation, including permanency planning, child protection, and child in need procedures actively promote and safeguard the welfare of children and young people represent the children’s directorate at pan-Dorset, regional, and national strategic meetings, ensuring effective outcomes for children and families take responsibility for any other duties as required by the operational and team managers About You: you hold a Diploma in Social Work or Certificate of Qualification in Social Work you have substantial experience as a social worker within the fostering service, with a strong background in complex assessments, child protection and child in need cases, and experience in court proceedings you possess excellent communication, negotiation, and assessment skills, with the ability to work under pressure and meet deadlines you have a comprehensive understanding of relevant statutory legislation, child protection procedures, and child sexual exploitation you have experience supervising staff or supporting the development of junior colleagues a full, clean UK driving licence is required to meet the travel demands of the role you can work flexibly, including occasional evenings and weekends, to meet the needs of the service Further Information For further information about this role, please contact Lisa Wilms, Service Manager - Fostering, on lisa.wilmsdorset council.gov.uk This is a full time role at 37 hours per week. This post requires significant travel. You must have a vehicle (or transport we deem suitable) available for use as needed. This post involves working with children and/or vulnerable adults and/or having access to significant information about them. It will be subject to a Disclosure and Barring Service check. See our policy on the employment of ex-offenders. See our policy on safeguarding children and young people. See our adult safeguarding policy. You must: have a degree in social work or equivalent be registered with the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) be able to fulfil the travel requirements of the post See the children’s social worker framework. About Us We’re passionate about making Dorset a great place to live, work and visit. Working for us should be no exception. At Dorset Council we: provide more than 450 services to over 300,000 residents have ambitious aspirations are excited about our future care about Dorset and all the people who live here know that all roles make a difference and that our employees are key to our success You will: have access to a range of employee benefits be part of an organisation that supports each other to grow and succeed have access to range of training opportunities which will help with your personal development and career progression We are challenging ourselves to become a more diverse and inclusive organisation. We recognise that recruitment and inclusion of individuals with diverse skills, perspectives and backgrounds will bring real strength to the council and our communities. We have a commitment to equality and welcome applications from everyone. We are proud to be a Disability Confident Employer. We offer an interview to everyone who declares a disability and meets the essential criteria for the role. We are keen to make our interviews accessible. Let us know on your job application if you have a disability and need any reasonable adjustments. We also look for applicants who share our commitment to our behaviours. We will ask you to evidence when you have demonstrated them as part of the selection process. If appointed, the personal information we collect from you will be shared with Cifas who will use it to prevent fraud, other unlawful or dishonest conduct, malpractice, and other seriously improper conduct. If any of these are detected, you could be refused certain services or employment. Your personal information will also be used to verify your identity. Further details of how your information will be used by us and Cifas, and your data protection rights, can be found at https://www.cifas.org.uk/fpn. This role is UK based and we will need to establish your Right to Work as part of the appointment process. We use generic job descriptions and person specifications. This means the job title on any attachments may differ from the job title in the advert. We may provide specific information in a context statement if relevant. Find out more about how to apply .