Description Organisation: Leicestershire County Council Work Location Bassett Street South Wigston Leicestershire LE18 4PE Worker Category: Field Based Worker Salary: £42,498 - £46,344 per annum (pro-rata for part-time) plus market premia £2,250 Working Hours: 37 hours per week Contract Type: Permanent Closing Date: 17th November 2024 Interview Date(s): TBC Come and join us We have vacancy for a Senior Practitioner in South Wigston Team C based at Bassett Street. If successful, you will support the Team Managers in ensuring that high-quality services are provided for local children and their families. About the Role The right support at the right time, working with the whole family network to promote positive attachments in a safe and stable family environment. Ensuring timely expert safeguarding and legal interventions where this is proportionate. Family Safeguarding is the new specialist service for children and young people at risk or experiencing significant harm and therefore in need of safeguarding within Leicestershire. Building on the robust practice already in place, learning from the national reviews, positive OFSTED and judicial feedback, this service is evolving into a more specialist child protection and court work service. Family Safeguarding is being structured to allow the workforce to refine and develop their safeguarding skills, concentrating team expertise to enable us to support families to achieve change where possible, and to skilfully use PLO pre-proceedings and court proceedings to achieve best outcomes for children. The enhanced specialisation of the service will facilitate improved PLO work, reducing delay for our most vulnerable children and young people. Deploying our skilled and experienced workforce of team managers, agency and permanent senior practitioners and social workers, support and assessment workers and support workers, we will build on their high levels of skills and experience to focus on delivering excellent safeguarding and court facing services. You will support the team manager with running POD meetings and other actions as they arise Family Safeguarding will offer support to children and families who are experiencing very high levels of need and risk, offering tailored and proportionate support to help children to have stable attachments and to live in safe and stable environments. The central themes of relationship-based and trauma-informed practice are embodied in the vision for Family Safeguarding, and as a learning organisation, we will continue to collect and reflect on the evidence we have for what works well, and what could be even better, continually improving our practice with and for the most vulnerable in our community. Building on our strong Signs of Safety framework we will enhance our expertise in Family Safeguarding through an improved training offer, enhanced supervision covering reflective case, personal and group supervision, supporting practitioners to enhance their relationship-based interventions, partnership working, evidencing and analysing the complex situations they face. Managers will be supported to offer increased evidence-based analysis, as well as collegiate and supervisory challenge capabilities. Leicestershire’s diverse community is served by an equally diverse workforce and culturally competent practice is a key strand of Leicestershire’s ability to achieve positive professional relationships that enable our clientele to achieve the positive changes needed to ensure best outcomes for children A DBS enhanced check for a regulated activity is required for this post. For information on our approach to the recruitment of ex-offenders, please see our policy statement. About You We want creative, experienced and supportive workers who will provide intensive and focused support to families in their homes. Developing effective relationships and using strengths-based and trauma-informed approaches will help to motivate and encourage behaviour change, leading to positive differences in children’s lives. To apply for this post, you must have: Degree in Social Work approved by the Social Work England (SWE) or equivalent social work qualification ie Certificate of Qualification in Social Work or Diploma in Social Work. and must also be registered with Social Work England. Experienced level 3 social worker in a children’s social work team. Experience of working in a range of settings including access/duty/intake, children in need, child protection, care proceedings, safeguarding, and looked-after children work. Experience of undertaking Section 47 enquiries. Experience of supervising social work students. Experience of using performance indicators to monitor and improve performance. Able to analyse information to reach sound decisions, often under pressure, and take responsibility for their outcome and regular reporting to the Team manager. All applicants must have a full valid driving licence, You must also have an understanding of, and commitment to, equality, diversity and inclusion. In addition, we also expect you to share our commitment to our values and will ask you to evidence when you have demonstrated them as part of the selection process. Reasonable adjustments will be considered for applicants with a disability. Interested in Flexible Working? We are keen to support employees to balance their working life with other commitments. Therefore, wherever possible, we will consider working arrangements that suit an individual's personal circumstances whilst still meeting the needs of the Council. If you would like to discuss the possible flexible working options that might be applicable to this role, please contact the person named below. This may include requests for term-time working, part-time hours, compressed hours, flexible start and finish times, home/remote working, etc. Every role within the Council has a defined working style which determines where they can work. The worker category applicable to this post is detailed in the above advert. You can find out more about our worker categories in the Our Working Styles page on our career site. For more information or an informal discussion, please contact: Jane Clamp Service Manager Email: jane.clampleics.gov.uk How to Apply Leicestershire County Council is an inclusive organisation which is on a journey to embed and celebrate equality, diversity and inclusion at every level. We warmly welcome and encourage applications from people of all backgrounds, as having a diverse workforce with different perspectives and ideas is fundamental to our values and enriches the services we offer our communities. We particularly welcome applicants from Ethnically Diverse and LGBTQ communities and people with disabilities to create a balanced workforce and one that reflects the communities we serve. Applicants with a disability who meet the criteria listed in the 'About You' section above will be offered an interview under the Disability Confident Employer Scheme. To apply for this job, please click on 'Apply Now'. You will need to upload a supporting statement as part of your application which explains how you meet the criteria listed in the 'About You' section above. For more information, see the How to Apply section on our career site. We reserve the right to close this vacancy early if we receive sufficient applications for the role. Therefore, if you are interested, please submit your application as early as possible. If you have any technical issues when trying to apply for this post or you want to request an application pack in an alternative format, please contact our Employee Service Centre by telephoning 0300 3030222 (select option 2) or raising a ticket via our online portal: https://emss.freshdesk.com/support/home. By applying for this post, you agree to our Terms and Conditions .