Senior Practitioner

Role Responsibility

About the role: 

The Adoption Partnership South East Regional Adoption Agency covers the whole of Kent, Medway and Bexley and you will be part of the RAA Family Finding team. The Senior Practitioner supports team members as well as the Team Manager.   

For this role, you will need excellent communication skills, sound understanding of the PLO process and the child’s journey into adoption; you will need comprehensive knowledge of attachment theory and the impact of developmental trauma on children, and have significant experience of working in children’s social care teams, as well as experience of supporting team members. You will understand and be able to undertake comprehensive assessments demonstrating sound understanding and clear analysis of children’s needs, and understand the rationale for Together or Apart siblings assessments; you will have sound knowledge about contact arrangements, child permanence reports, life story work, and ability to undertake direct work and preparation of the child. 

As a family finding Senior Practitioner, it is essential that you are able to work in partnership with and chair meetings involving children’s social work colleagues, foster carers, other involved multi-agency, multi-disciplinary professionals and prospective adopters to secure timely, well planned adoption placement for children. 

Your work will also involve some assessment of potential adopters; this includes assessment work, preparing reports, matching with children and supporting adopters throughout the process until the adoption order is granted. 

You will help us make children’s voices heard across Kent and finding the best adoptive family for them. In return, you can expect good quality support from us. You’ll also enjoy a competitive salary and training opportunities to help you achieve your full potential. 

About you:
We are looking for someone with significant post-qualifying experience as a social worker and/or team leader/Senior Practitioner in Specialist Children’s Services. You will be able to provide supervision, direction and guidance to staff within the RAA family finding team and provide professional expertise, skills and advice to enable the provision of an effective, high quality social work service that meets existing and new RAA and multi-agency policies, procedures and practices.

You will be able to lead and oversee social work activity for the team, providing oversight, guidance and advice on all social work activity within the team. You will need to be able to manage the progression of social work cases, including a significant proportion of highly complex cases which require a high level of specialist expertise through to timely intervention, resolution, case closure or transfer. 

You will ensure that a strengths based approach and thorough understanding of children’s experiences and individual needs are at the heart of care, permanency and support planning for the children, to identify suitable adopters and enable involved professionals and adopters to meet desired outcomes, identified needs, maintain long-term wellbeing for the children, and support them to meet their full potential. You will need to be able to build positive, supportive, trusting and respectful relationships with children, foster carers, adoptive families and the range of involved professionals in order to help progress the plan of adoption for children and support adoptive families. 

You will also be willing to learn and demonstrate commitment to delivering excellent outcomes for children and young people. In addition to your experience of supporting families, report writing and meeting deadlines you must be able to work independently as well as part of a team with a positive performance culture. Above all, you will be child focused.

For full Job Description, please find the attached document. 

This post is subject to an Enhanced Disclosure application to the Disclosure and Barring service and registration as a qualified Social Worker with Social Work England.

The role requires you to be mobile throughout a wide operational area including travelling around the county of Kent, Bexley and Medway and beyond and be available to do so in an emergency. 

This post is considered by KCC to be a customer-facing position. The Council therefore has a statutory duty under Part 7 of the Immigration Act (2016) to ensure that post holders have a command of spoken English/Welsh sufficient for the effective performance of the job requirements. The appropriate standards are set out in the Job Description/Person Specification.

This is a full-time post, with occasional evening work required.

Interviews will take place on: 22nd October 2021

Contact Details

For more information or an informal discussion about this post, please contact Nina Gurung on: nina.gurung@kent.gov.uk

About the Company

KCC is committed to building a workforce which reflects the diversity of the county's working residents, encouraging applications from people of all ages, abilities, genders, sexual orientations, ethnic backgrounds and faiths, and aspires to create an inclusive workplace where everyone can be themselves at work.

Please note – if you are interested, please apply as soon as possible as the closing date for this advert may be earlier than stated should a number of suitably qualified candidates apply.