Specialist Care Manager WCC623534

Job Details:

Salary range: £42,912 - £46,854 per annum. Salary negotiable depending upon experience 
Work location: Westminster City Hall, 64 Victoria Street, Westminster, SW1E 6QP 
Hours per week: 36
Contract type: Permanent
Vetting requirements: Enhanced DBS Check  
Closing date: 17 April 2026
Interview date: 30 April 2026

About Us:

THE EXTRAORDINARY STORY OF THE POWER OF CREATIVE THERAPY
 
Adult Social Care in Westminster City Council is a world of extraordinary stories, where our passionate, caring and committed professionals do brilliant work every day.
 
Mr J’s mental health had declined in which he was admitted to hospital. While he was being looked after we grew concerned about his personal care and lack of routine, and quickly realised that he needed social care support, to support his independence and help prepare him for a successful return to the community he loved.

He was assigned to Ms T, one of our experienced Mental Health Social Workers, who took a strengths-based, person-centred approach to his recovery. From their very first meetings, she built a strong rapport with Mr J and discovered he had a real passion for painting. She encouraged his creativity by providing art supplies and linking him with art therapy, helping him use his imagination and love of colour to manage his emotions and rediscover a genuine sense of purpose and fulfilment.

Working together, Ms T and Mr J developed a personalised plan for his discharge. This included re-establishing daily routines, building support networks, and engaging with a range of creative outlets. And so he could receive support and encouragement when he was back home, she also helped to connect him with a number of local art and mental health groups.
 
By the time he left hospital, Mr J felt much more positive, confident and hopeful about the future. His journey illustrates how our amazing Social Workers transform lives for the better, and focusing on a person’s creativity, strengths and connection to their community can make a world of difference to their mental health.

The Role:

As Substance Use Specialist Care Manager you can make your own powerful contribution to Westminster’s success. Managing a challenging caseload, you’ll support service users with mental illness and substance use comorbidity, and help to improve their lives by offering assessments, care planning, harm minimisation advice and group work. Delivering individual psychosocial sessions to vulnerable people who often have a history of difficult engagement with services, you’ll also operate as a ‘link worker’ between statutory mental health services and the local authority’s Dual Diagnosis Team, and focus on ensuring that information is shared between services.

Working proactively with voluntary sector substance use services, attending meetings and providing guidance, advice and knowledge relating to mental illness, you’ll offer harm minimisation advice to service users, promote their general health and well-being, and maintain positive therapeutic relationships with them. When it’s appropriate, we’ll also expect you to identify and refer service users to substance use day and/or residential rehab programmes, regularly review the placements you make, and help them achieve abstinence.

You’ll have a wide range of additional tasks – these include co-facilitating groups that help service users learn from each other’s experiences, providing training to fellow professionals regarding Dual Diagnosis, and keeping comprehensive and up-to-date records of your interventions. Committed to identifying the cultural, spiritual and communication needs of users within our diverse communities, you should also be ready to participate in a multi-disciplinary response to crisis situations, and undertake continuous risk assessment and management. It goes without saying that you’ll be familiar with the provisions of The Care Act, Mental Health Act and Mental Capacity Act, and we’ll also expect you to act as a Lead Enquiry Officer in Care Act assessments and safeguarding enquires.

Please refer to the Job Description for more information.

About You:

To be a success in this vital role you should have well developed experience of working in an inpatient or community setting with service users who have severe and enduring mental health and/or substance abuse issues, the ability to respond to challenging mental health crises, and be capable of undertaking assessments to determine service eligibility against statutory criteria. It’s important that you have experience of delivering one-to-one psychosocial interventions and facilitating group sessions, using techniques such as Motivational Interviewing and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy to facilitate positive change, and you should also be ready to work alongside residential rehabilitation services.

Your warm and empathetic communication skills will see you building positive therapeutic relationships with service users, and you’ll be capable of assessing, designing, delivering and evaluating health and social care packages that help to put them on the road to fulfilling new lives. Able to work collaboratively with a wide range of individuals and agencies, including families, carers, the Police and Ambulance services, and other statutory and non-statutory bodies, you should also possess good record keeping and IT skills, with a particular focus on Microsoft’s suite of software.

It’s essential that you have a strong commitment to implementing Equal Opportunities for care delivery and staff in a multi-cultural community, and it’s also important that you’re up to speed with the latest developments in nursing and social care, including concepts of recovery and the personalisation agenda. With a clear understanding of the practical implications of the Data Protection Act, we’ll also expect you to be qualified in one of the following ways: a Social Work degree and registration with Social Work England, a Nursing degree or qualification and registration with NMC, an Occupational Therapist qualification and current registration with a governing body, or a Clinical Psychologist qualification and current registration with a governing body.

Westminster City Council is committed to supporting Care Leavers into the workplace. Care Leavers seeking their first job and who wish to be considered under our scheme, will automatically be invited to interview should they meet the essential criteria for the role.

What We Offer:

Westminster is an amazing place. We are home to more than 200,000 residents from all backgrounds, over 50,000 vibrant and vital businesses and three-quarters-of-a-million people work in Westminster.

Westminster City Council’s strategy is to work towards a Fairer Westminster. A Fairer Westminster is one in which our communities are at the heart of our decision-making and help to determine the city’s future. By working directly with our communities and other partners, we can build a more inclusive city that celebrates our diverse communities, and where residents, workers and visitors from all backgrounds will feel welcome and safe.

At Westminster City Council, we pride ourselves on being an inclusive workplace and employer of choice. We encourage and welcome applications from people from all backgrounds and aim to have a workforce that, at all levels, represents the communities we serve. We champion equality, diversity, inclusion and wellbeing and aim to create a workplace where everyone feels valued, has a sense of belonging and is empowered to be their best, that is the Westminster Way. To find out more about how we do this visit  https://www.westminster.gov.uk/health-and-social-care/public-health-strategy-policies-and-reports/equality-duties

As a forward thinking Council we appreciate that people work in different ways, therefore our staff benefit from working a range of flexible working patterns as well as Agile working.

The Council is a Disability Confident Employer. If you have declared a disability in your application , we guarantee an interview if you meet the essential criteria of the job. If you are invited for interview, you will be asked if you need any reasonable adjustments in order to attend, and we will make these wherever possible.

We reserve the right to extend or close this vacancy early without warning subject to the volume of suitable applicants.