Senior Social Worker LBHF613419

Job Details:

Salary range: £44,862 - £53,109 per annum
Work location: 145 King Street, Hammersmith, London W6 9XY
Hours per week: 36.00
Contract type: Permanent
Vetting requirements: Enhanced DBS Check 

Closing date: 28 April 2024
Contact details for Informal discussion: Gerne Pieterse, Workforce and Practice Manager, on 07776672765 or via email: gerne.pieterse@lbhf.gov.uk

Advert Text:

Hammersmith & Fulham offer a range of opportunities to grow your career and develop your expertise. We are looking for talented and motivated experienced social workers who share our values to join our frontline services: Contact and Assessment, Family Support and Child Protection, and Children and Looked After and Care Leavers teams. 

Following our last focused visit, OFSTED reported that "exemplary practice was seen" with "strong, aspirational leaders creating a culture of continuous learning where staff report they feel highly valued." 

Our ambition is to further increase the quality of our practice and work with children, young people, and families in order to sustain positive change. As a department, we promote a highly supportive culture that allows you to do what you do best, encompassing individual mentoring, having manageable workloads and clear developmental opportunities. 

We appreciate and value our employees and recognise the importance of a motivated and supported workforce who have a good work life balance. We will support your development through a variety of opportunities across the council which include:
•    High quality regular reflective supervision 
•    Training opportunities, including training in systemic practice
•    Clinical family therapist allocated to each service 
•    Hybrid working and flexible working options 
•    2 wellbeing days a month in addition to generous annual leave
•    Very competitive pay rates with well established social work career progression scheme

Our mission is to be the best council. To do this we need the best people to help build our vision. If you are a social worker committed to relational practice and improving lives, looking to develop your career in a fast-paced, professional environment whilst making a difference, we would be delighted to hear from you.

Appointments of social workers with some experience but not yet ready to apply for the senior role will be considered for a social worker role. 

This a rolling advert and interviews will be offered as and when successful candidates are shortlisted.

Please refer to the Role Profile for more information.

Role Responsibilities:

You will need to:

SPECIALIST CHILD CARE DUTIES

•    Provide a preventative and rehabilitative service in with expectations of the Children’s Act and facilitating appropriate resources where necessary to enable children to remain with their own families.

•    Assess situations where children are referred as being in need of protection, accommodation or care provision, being particularly mindful of equal opportunities issues.

•    Plan quickly and effectively, involving carers as partners in the decisions made in respect of children.

•    Aim that children should remain with their own families wherever possible.  Where it is legally upheld that natural family circumstances have irretrievably broken down to plan a secure and permanent home future for children, ensuring they have clear information about their own background and contact with natural relatives wherever possible.

•    Provide an emergency service for assessment and action where children are referred as being at risk of immediate physical danger.

People Values:

How we act defines who we are.  At the heart of our organisation is a common approach to defining ‘who we are’.  We are looking for people who can build this into everything they do.

We are fair

We treat everyone with compassion, dignity and fairness. We value the views and opinion of others, and promote benefits and opportunities for all.

We are caring

We care about our borough and doing things well. We focus on standards and continuous improvement; learning from our mistakes and celebrating success.

We are collaborators

We work together for a better society. We work with our residents, businesses, schools, third sector and others for better outcomes for everyone.

We are driven

We will only settle for the very best. We seek to continually improve and put our residents, customers and businesses at the heart of everything we do.

Recruiting for Attitude:

Your skills and ability are important however, we recruit as much for attitude as we do experience. We are looking for people who have the following attributes: 

Complex problem-solving 
The ability to work within a complex system and find simple solutions and outcomes that deliver real change. 

Critical thinking 
The ability to challenge the norms through evidence-based approaches using both numerical and critical reasoning and thinking. You can rationalise decision-making and form views quickly and soundly from a range of sources. 

Creativity 
You take approaches that demonstrate how doing things differently and creatively changes the dynamic in situations. You can apply creative solutions that deliver hard outcomes. 

People management 
You can get the best out of people. You have a coaching-style and drive through a commitment to personal and professional development. You are clear in your expectations and have exceptional feedback from your team about their working environment. You recognise and support people as individuals. 

Coordinating with others 
You have the knack of working well with others. You have an appreciation of your own presence and approach and can demonstrate how you have developed and continue to develop how you work with others. You can also recognise how others work, think, and feel to get the most out of collaboration. 

Emotional intelligence 
You have a high degree of self-awareness and self-regulation in a wide range of situations from one-to-one conversations to team and group dynamics. You can recognise motivating factors and demonstrate empathy appropriately applying a wide range of adaptive social skills. 

Judgement and decision making 
You can take rational and evidence-based decisions and take responsibility for your decisions and actions. Where there is ambiguity or a lack of evidence you can demonstrate the ability to understand the environment and show flexibility in applying your judgement. 

Negotiation 
You can demonstrate an understanding of the range of skills and techniques required to successfully negotiate with a range of other partners. This includes understanding how to structure and undertake successful negotiation on an organisational-wide level. 

Service orientation 
You must be unequivocal in your commitment and drive for outstanding service delivery. Both in terms of the quality of products and work delivered as well as the achievement of objectives. You and your team can demonstrate how your overall contribution to the organisation and service delivers to our organisational aims and objectives. 

Cognitive flexibility 
The ability to recognise the environment in which you work and adapt and shift to this environment to maximise your own personal achievement and lead others in the same approach. Applying cognitive flexibility to situations of significant change and transformation. 

Role Specific Qualifications:

A recognised Social Work qualification (Degree/DipSW/CQSW)
Social Work England registration