**PLEASE NOTE THIS POST IS ONLY OPEN TO INTERNAL APPLICANTS**
Organisation: Leicestershire County Council
Work Location: Bassett Street Locality Offices, Wigston, Leicester
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 per week
Contract Type: Permanent
Closing Date: 24th June 2025
Interview Date(s): 8th July 2025
About the Role
Learning from the recommendations in the Independent National Review of Children’s Social Care and the government response to this, we created an integrated service called Family Help last year, where both Social Workers and Keyworkers (AQWs) engage, support and encourage families to make positive changes in their lives.
Family Help focuses on strong and consistent professional relationships, responding more quickly and intensively to families so that they get the right help at the right time. Building on workers’ capacity to listen, understand and respond to trauma, and supporting children and families to build strength, resilience, confidence and parenting capacity. By unlocking the potential of family and community networks, we aim to support more children to stay safely at home, and when this is not possible, to remain with wider family and friends.
By supporting staff through regular reflective supervision, ensuring positive training and career pathways, staff embrace this more intensive way of working and remain in post longer, providing our families with the professional consistency they need, want and deserve.
Our duties to Children in Need have not changed but have improved our approach to achieve improved sustained outcomes and to make sure that we deploy the right staff to offer the right approaches promptly when families need our help.
As part of our Family Help Service, we have a Senior Social Work Oversight Practitioner vacancy, who will support the Team Manager in ensuring that a high-quality Child in Need service is provided for children and their families.
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 .
We want a creative and supportive worker who will provide Social Work oversight on Child in Need cases allocated to alternatively qualified staff (Keyworkers), to support progress of plans and intervention to families in their homes.To ensure that Child in Need meetings are child focused, that children’s voice is central, and that their participation and contribution is maximised, along with that of their parents and carers, so that we achieve effective plans and best/sustainable outcomes.
About You
Please refer to these 7 points when making your application, giving examples as evidence of how you meet them
To apply for this post, you must have:
1. 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. The worker must also be registered with Social Work England.
2. Experienced level 3 social worker in a children’s social work team.
3. Experience of working in: access/duty/intake; children in need, child protection, care proceedings, safeguarding, and looked-after children work.
4. Experience of undertaking Section 47 enquiries
5. Experience of chairing complex meetings and ensuring child voice is heard, and their participation and contribution is maximised, along with that of their parents/carers.
6. Experience of using performance indicators to monitor and improve performance.
7. Experience of multi-agency working, of challenging partners, of holding them to account, and of encouraging action
You must also have an understanding of, and commitment to, equality, diversity and inclusion.
In addition, we also expect you to share 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 page on our career site.
For more information or an informal discussion, please contact:
Helen Farquharson, Team Manager
Email:
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:.
By applying for this post, you agree to our .