As Practice Manager, you will lead the Families Plus 5‑18 team. Your work helps vulnerable families overcome their difficulties and see their children and young people thrive. Overseeing the team's delivery work, you will directly supervise and be responsible for their performance management, allocation of referrals and quality assurance of their support. The team works with family members in their homes, community settings such as schools and children's centres, as well as the council's hub buildings across South Gloucestershire.
Responsibilities
* It will be your responsibility to ensure records are kept in accordance with professional standards and prepare and present reports on cases and issues.
* You will supervise the work of the team and assist in the overall leadership and management to deliver the personalised support service.
* To ensure services are delivered to a high standard, you will monitor the quality of the work, using data to target and allocate resources appropriately.
* Using your specialist knowledge, you will provide high level support and supervision and ensure case work decisions are made in accordance with agreed safeguarding procedures and standards.
* It will be key for you to plan and manage departmental budgets within the service. You will be required to travel widely within the authority so you must either have a current driving licence and provide a car or have access to appropriate means of travel. Business insurance will need to be added to your insurance policy.
Benefits & Commitments
* Please note that due to the nature of this role it is a requirement of employment that an enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check is obtained for this post.
* We're a positive, proactive team, with supportive management who listen to ideas, and act on them - fast. Coming out of Covid, we've seen rapidly increasing demand to support children and families with ever more complex needs. We recognised the pressure this was placing on our frontline teams and to ensure we can deliver on our high ambitions for our children and young people, we're making significant new investments in these areas.
* We're expanding our frontline teams. We've created 60 new roles, which will mean consistently lower caseloads for our social workers, so they can deliver genuinely child-centred support.
* We're making it easier for staff to work flexibly, enabling them to work how and where they need to, to do their jobs as well as they can.
* We're strengthening our reward offer to recognise the fantastic job our staff do.
* We're adopting clinical supervision to support staff because we recognise that our work can be tough emotionally. It builds on our training offer, helping staff to develop critical thinking skills and support their work with families.
* We're building early intervention partnership capacity because we know we can achieve better results for families if we get multi‑agency working right.
* We're increasing what we spend on evidence‑based specialist expertise and capabilities, including specialist trauma support and an in‑house psychologist to support families.
* We're introducing new initiatives like the Mockingbird extended family model in fostering, a Caring Dads scheme and a new approach to domestic abuse.
* We're enhancing an already exceptional training and development offer. A new systemic practice academy will drive our focus on relationship based social work.
* Finally, it might be boring, but we're investing in our systems and processes, because we want them to help us, rather than hold us back in our work. These investments demonstrate our absolute focus on providing an excellent, family‑centred service. We keep workloads manageable, we welcome flexible working and we're recognised for the opportunities we provide for career development, training and secondment.
* Right now, we're looking for talented, ambitious social workers to join us across our adult and children's services. Our commitments to you : Unmatched training, development and secondment opportunities, A proactive team with supportive management, Commitment to excellence, Realistic caseloads, Flexible working opportunities, A comprehensive Assessed and Supported Year in Employment (ASYE) programme.
* South Gloucestershire offers a rich mix of stunning countryside and urban culture. At the same time, due to our being near to the M4, M5 and M32, it's an easy commute from Bristol, Bath, Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Oxfordshire, Somerset and, with the bridge charges recently abolished, south Wales.
Qualifications
* We require you to hold a degree or relevant professional qualification e.g. youth, early years or social care.
* It is essential that you have significant post qualification experience in a children's service setting, to include experience of staff supervision and working with vulnerable children, young people and families.
* You must have a detailed understanding of successful strategies to improve outcomes for children, young people and families and have a clear understanding of the national issues.
* You will be able to demonstrate a thorough knowledge of current legislation and best practice relating to children and young people's services.
* On occasions, you will be required to work flexibly and outside normal working hours such as evenings or weekends, this is to ensure the team is responsive to the needs of the families we are supporting.
How a career at South Gloucestershire Council is different
* We know our team work best when they have balance in their lives and we offer genuine flexibility to help them achieve that work/life balance.
* We value our staff as individuals, investing in their careers and we are recognised for the quality, breadth and depth of our training and development offer, which helps make the greatest long‑term difference in work.
* We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the safety and welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults. Ensuring all our staff are given right skills, knowledge and support to recognise and respond effectively to potential abuse or neglect.
* We recognise that our diverse team of skilled and dedicated people make us a great place to work. We welcome applications from everyone and ensure that individuals are selected, promoted and developed on the basis of their merits and abilities.
* Our teams at South Gloucestershire Council are making a real difference to the lives of people who live, work and learn here.
* We're building and shaping communities which people are proud of.
* We're working with the most vulnerable in our community to help them achieve what they want in life.
* We're investing in our schools to ensure every child and young person in South Gloucestershire achieves their full potential.
* We've achieved a great deal, but we need talented and dedicated people to ensure we continue to make a difference.
* We're making a difference, be part of it!
* At South Gloucestershire Council, we'll support you at every moment.
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