Progress your career as a Consultant Social Worker with Bury Council
We are partnering with Think Ahead a charity that works with NHS and Local Authority mental health services to strengthen the contribution of social work. We’ll be taking on four trainee social workers (participants) who will join the organisation in August 2024. This is a great opportunity for an experienced social worker to take on the role of Consultant Social Worker/Associate Consultant Social Worker.
In this role you will:
* Join a network of leaders across the country promoting and strengthening mental health social work.
* Lead and develop four talented participants, who are passionate about mental health and social work.
* Develop your skills in practice, supervision, and education.
* Get fully funded CPD training with Middlesex University.
* Be paid at grade 14
In this full-time permanent position, you’ll manage a “unit” of four participants who are placed in an adult mental health service. You retain a frontline role, share a service user caseload, and act as their leader and role model. You will provide practice education of outstanding quality. You’ll work with an academic tutor and assess participants’ ability to put social work theories, interventions, and legislation into practice.
Benefits
You will join a group of Consultant Social Workers delivering a prestigious, high-profile initiative across the country (to date, Think Ahead has worked with more than half of NHS Trusts and over a third of Local Authorities). You’ll receive CPD training to develop your expertise in evidence-based interventions and leadership skills. You need to be at least a stage 1 qualified practice educator and will receive Practice Educator Professional Standards (PEPS) training to stage 2. If you have PEPS 2, you will do one day of PEPS refresher training.
Requirements
You will be a registered social worker with significant experience of working with service users with complex mental health needs from a range of adult mental health services. You will also need the enthusiasm, confidence, and authority to inspire others.
We expect Consultant Social Workers to role-model these personal qualities following Think Ahead’s values:
* Leadership: to act as a professional role model, to lead the participant unit in the organisational context and manage day to day operations and provide inclusive learning opportunities.
* Motivation: commitment to undertake practice education and deliver high quality placement learning.
* Adaptability: ability to adapt to competing demands of the role including managing participants' learning experience as well as their own training and development, and organisational roles and responsibilities.
* Relationship-building: establish an effective collaborative working relationship with participants and manage the power and authority in the educator/assessor role skilfully with underpinning principles of equality, diversity and inclusion.
* Communication: ability to provide constructive feedback for participants' practice and development.
* Problem-solving: ability to look at strengths-based approaches to navigate complexity in placement learning.
* Self-awareness: understanding of professional values and ethics and able to advise participants of their rights and actively lead on challenging oppressive or discriminatory situations that may be experienced by participants.
More information
Please see the job description for more details. For an informal discussion about the role, please contact Alexia Fenwick, Business Development Manager at Think Ahead, a.fenwick@thinkahead.org, 07901 611 501).
Or contact Emma Massey
You can also read about the experiences of some of Think Ahead’s current Consultant Social Workers on Community Care and Think Ahead’s website. The “Introduction to Think Ahead and the Consultant Social Worker role” document also provides an overview of the organisation and the role for those not familiar with Think Ahead.
About Bury
The Council is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare or children, young people and vulnerable adults and expects all staff to share this commitment. Appointment may be subject to a satisfactory disclosure at the appropriate level under the Disclosure and Barring Service.
In line with safer recruitment, please ensure that your application/CV covers your full employment history and there is a reason noted for any gaps in employment. Successful candidates will be asked to provide relevant references for the past ten years and character references will not be accepted.
As a Corporate Parent, ensure that the work and services you deliver considers our care experienced young people, promotes their life chances empowers them to influence the policies, services, and decisions that affect them, champions their rights, and ensure they grow up in the best possible way
Benefits of working for Bury Council
To hear about the benefits for working with Bury Council, please visit A good employer | greater jobs
We support employees to work with agility, where appropriate for the post and service requirements.
We are committed to Bury being an equal society that recognises values and embraces all people, regardless of any difference, for the skills, abilities and experiences they bring into the workforce and the wider community. Therefore we guarantee an interview for disabled people, looked after children/ care leavers, armed forces personnel (including reservists and veterans) and carers of adults or disabled children if they meet the essential criteria.
Next steps
For an informal chat regarding the role please contact Emma Massey on e.massey@bury.gov,uk