Senior social work practitioner - safeguarding adults hub

About The Job

Salary: £48,226 to £51,356 per annum
Working Pattern: Full time, 37 hours per week
Contract Type: Permanent
Location: Horsham office base

You will work as part of a strong and dynamic social work service. In this role you will work with colleagues from all our statutory partners, providers and members of the public when reviewing and making vital decisions in relation to Safeguarding Adults.

As a Senior Social Work Practitioner, you’ll support the Team Manager in delivering high-quality, strengths-based practice. You’ll play a key role in mentoring and supervising colleagues, managing complex cases, and ensuring high standards across assessments and care planning, and the functioning of duty.

You will be expected to work within organisational, policy and legislative frameworks as you support young people to increase their independence and plan for the future.

You’ll need a strong commitment to the strengths-based model—empowering people to meet their outcomes using their own capabilities, family support, and local community assets, alongside funded care where appropriate.

To succeed in this role you need to have sound and accurate IT and keyboard skills, and as a senior team member you will need to be able to work autonomously and flexibly, including some working out of normal office hours. You will also need to be able to travel across the county and work from various locations across the county.

What You’ll Be Doing

• Supporting the Team Manager in day-to-day operations
• Supervising and mentoring team members
• Chairing Best Interest Meetings
• Quality assuring assessments and reviews with a strengths-based focus
• Promoting and supporting staff wellbeing
• Contributing to complaint resolution and continuous service improvement
• Holding your own case load

You will be a confident and empathetic communicator—capable of managing expectations, delivering difficult messages sensitively, and finding alternative solutions in line with our approach. Experience in a supervisory role (or strong foundations and training in supervision) is essential.

You’ll also be committed to upholding strong social work values and supporting both qualified and unqualified staff.

Experience and Skills

Key Skills include:

• Ability to work proactively as a member of the team to make an accurate assessment of needs and negotiate and implement effective plans and outcomes, whilst prioritising workload and meeting deadlines.
• Expertise of managing situations with complex and competing risks, utilising a risk enablement approach, and using evidence-based practice. Solution focussed with the ability to analyse complex situations and provide forward-looking strategies and solutions that consider a variety of possible strength-based solutions, balancing risks, resources and desired outcomes.
• Highly developed communication skills to influence in a multi-disciplinary setting and communicate clearly and effectively to explain complicated information to a wide range of people and negotiate and persuade others to adopt a particular course of action that they may not otherwise wish to take.
• Able to model and use social work skills in practice, supervision, mentoring and leadership to develop and maintain an environment in which professional curiosity, critical reflection and analysis is valued, staff are supported their find own solutions and practice capability is developed.

Please see job description for full list of key skills, additional qualifications and/or experience for this role and cover how you meet them in your application.

Rewards and Benefits

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.

Reference number: CAFHE06220.

We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults. This post is subject to Social Work England registration, an enhanced DBS check, 5 years referencing and a health check.

West Sussex County Council is an equal opportunities employer committed to promoting an environment that is inclusive and free from all forms of unlawful or unfair discrimination and values the diversity of its people. We actively welcome applications from people of all backgrounds and take every possible step to ensure that no individual will be disadvantaged.

For information regarding your eligibility to apply for this role under our Disability or Veteran’s Guaranteed Interview Scheme (if you meet all the essential criteria), this can be found on our application help page.