Through Lewisham Children’s Social Care has been changing, we know what good social work looks like and our improvement plan is all about creating the right conditions and culture for good practice to thrive. Our vision is….
1. Families are respected and supported to stay together, whenever there is safety.
2. Families will tell us they understand why we are involved.
3. Children will tell us their social worker has made a difference to their lives.
4. Children who are in our care know we care and we won’t give up on them.
5. Young people who have been in our care feel confident about their future.
We know that describing good practice is easy, the challenge is making your vision a day to day reality. This requires inspiring leadership, resources and a clear, realistic plan for how to get there. That’s why our improvement plan takes a whole system approach and we have introduced Signs of Safety as our relationship based practice framework. We have made significant progress in year one which Ofsted recognised when they inspected us in June. But we know there is a lot more to do and we need more good, creative, energetic social workers and managers to join our team to get us where we want to be.
We are recruiting Social Workers into the Meliot Family Centre
Are you a dedicated and passionate Social Worker, committed to making a positive difference in the lives of our vulnerable families to ensure that they can thrive and flourish? Do you have excellent assessment and analysis skills and a desire to work in a supportive and reflective team? If so, you are the kind of person we are looking for to join our team of Independent Assessors!!
The Meliot Centre is a specialist provision that offers wide range of services, which include family assessment, intervention and support to children and families who live in London Borough of Lewisham who may be ‘in need’ or at risk of also offer supervised contact to families where they have children subject to care proceedings.
We are specifically recruiting Social Workers to specialist posts focusing on parenting assessment work. You will complete pre-proceedings and court directed parenting assessments as well as domestic abuse risk and vulnerability assessments. To be able to undertake a variety of assessments you will be trained receive domestic abuse assessment training via Respect and will also be trained in Parent Assess. As an assessor you will be able to utilise the family support and contact service to support to inform the outcome of your assessment, offering targeted intervention and support to help parents address their difficulties in order to parent their children in the way that they need to enable them to meet the full potential.
We are a borough who works within the Signs of Safety framework, and this provides us with our overarching approach to working with families. We also adopt a number of other approaches to help understand and work with our families, such as trauma informed and restorative practice. We use signs of safety mapping to explore and analyse the work we are doing with families and to also help us consider recommendations. You will be offered access to regular Signs of Safety training and the opportunity to become a practice leader through attending the day practice leader’s course.
We also have a strong working relationships with Goldsmiths, University of London and our staff have the opportunity to work with university colleagues as teaching consultants delivering social work education.
If you want to work in the thriving London Borough of Culture and our social work vision connects with your professional values, then we are interested in hearing from you. We are looking for people to join our team who:
6. value the importance of communication and seeking feedback
7. can inspire and motivate those they work with, manage and lead
8. are committed to developing their skills and expertise to deliver an excellent service
9. are professionally curious and value thinking slowly and calmly in a balanced way
10. work inclusively, collaboratively with others recognising their strengths
11. take responsibility and make a positive contribution by focusing on solutions
12. are transparent, are appreciative in enquiry, reflect and learn
In return, we’ll offer excellent development opportunities, plus a range of benefits that includes a career average pension scheme, flexible working, a generous leave entitlement and the opportunity to make a real difference to our local community.
We are based in Meliot Centre in Deptford SE. There are local train stations - minutes’ walk from both offices, and the train journey from London Bridge is approximately minutes. There are also numerous bus routes that stop right by the offices.