This is a Gloucestershire County Council job.
1. Job Title: Family Drug & Alcohol Court Social Worker
2. Job Location: Stroud, Tewkesbury and Forest of Dean
3. Salary: £39,152 - £47,181 per annum
4. Hours per Week: 37.00
5. Contract Type: Permanent
6. Closing Date: 05/10/2025
7. Job Requisition Number: 12149
8. This post is open to job share
GCC are looking for FDAC Social Workers to deepen their practice and develop their skills.
Reward and Support
For all your hard work, you will receive the following:
9. between £39,152 - £47,181 per annum subject to experience
10. £4,000 welcome payment*
11. £2,000 retention payment*
12. up to £8,000 for relocation funds*
13. flexible and agile working opportunities
14. 25.5 days annual leave rising to 30.5 days after 5 years continuous service
15. option to purchase 10 days of additional leave per year (pro rata for part-time staff)
16. family friendly policies and benefits to help support you and your family
17. supportive and positive working environment with regular, robust supervision
18. Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS)
19. access to our Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) that provides free, confidential, counselling and advice for employees, available 24 hours a day, online and by telephone
20. an in-house Occupational Health service
21. employee discount scheme
22. cycle to work scheme
23. links to employee networks such as Prism (LGBT+) and the Young Employees Network
24. career development and qualification opportunities
25. access to our Social Work Academy
Right child, right support, right time, every time
In our recent inspection in June 2025, our Children’s Services have been officially judged as ‘Good’ with ‘Outstanding’ elements. Ofsted also said ‘Leaders have set out a clear vision for delivering success for children, by modelling values and creating a culture where the workforce, children and families feel valued and heard; risk is managed confidently with bottom lines clearly set out.’
This marks an important step in our journey to improve outcomes for our children and young people, and we remain focused on our mission: to continue building on this success and ensure that every child and young person in our county has the opportunity to thrive.
Gloucestershire offers a range of opportunities to develop your career, supported by a phenomenal Social Work Academy offer, a developing systemic practice methodology, an ambitious leadership team and an award-winning workforce.
We are a local authority adopting, and training all colleagues in, systemic social work practice. If you would like to be part of an authority that takes a relational approach to working with families and focuses on what needs to change in the system around a child and family to enable children to thrive, then consider a role with GCC.
We are looking 2 FDAC social workers to cover three localities; Stroud, Tewkesbury and Forest of Dean. You will hold an FDAC family and work alongside the multi-agency service and TACS. You will work to deliver evidence-based therapeutic interventions in the collaborative, problem-solving court, FDAC. A crucial aspect of these roles will be to bring learning back into the locality teams and further enhance services to locality families and communities.
As a locality FDAC Social Worker, you’ll experience:
26. systemic practice that is curious, courageous, and compassionate
27. trauma-informed approaches
28. multi-professional collaboration and planning
29. deeper understanding of Hidden Harm and its impact on children
30. confidence in court settings and the expert voice of social workers
31. restorative practice with high support and high challenge
32. development of multi-agency interventions
33. use of language that cares
34. collaborative permanency planning
35. equal access to FDAC for families across all localities
36. you’ll be the ‘spoke’, holding one FDAC case from your locality
37. TACS will be the ‘hub’, supporting you as part of the wider family team
38. you’ll deliver interventions and share learning with your locality team
What it will invole:
39. hold one FDAC case (approx. 2 days/week)
40. reduced caseload to support this work
41. attend fortnightly FDAC hearings with your family
42. write and curate all FDAC reports (review, evidence, final)
43. attend formulation and intervention planning meetings
44. deliver interventions and support permanency planning
45. work within a multidisciplinary team (including nurses, therapists, and support workers)
46. receive a full induction, peer and 1:1 supervision, and contribute to transformation reviews
How to apply
We reserve the right to close an advertisement earlier than the stated closing date if we receive a suitable number of applications.
If you would like to find out more about our Children's Service please take a look here:
The council will consider sponsorship for this role, in line with Home Office regulations and subject to satisfactory pre-employment checks.
*Please note that all our welcome and retention payments are subject to terms and conditions as well as tax and national insurance deductions
Under the terms of our Safer Recruitment Policy, if you are invited to interview, we will take up safeguarding references prior to your interview to understand your suitability to work with vulnerable children. These references will then be discussed in your interview. Please give details of at least two referees, one of whom must be your present and/or last employer and the other from a previous employer(s). These will need to cover the last three years of employment/education. In the case of applicants leaving full time education or not having worked since doing so, the Head of School, College or University should be one of the named referees. We do not accept references from friends or family members or workplace colleagues (who are not more senior). To ensure we process your application in a speedy and efficient way, we will contact your referees by DocuSign. Where appropriate, please inform them of your application.
Additional Information
To access the Job Profile for this role, please follow the link below:-
This position is subject to a DBS check.
Hybrid working arrangements are available for the majority of our roles, giving teams the opportunity to work in a way that suits them, balancing service need and individual choice, with a mix of both remote and office working.