Social Worker - Integrated Adolescent Service

Role Responsibility

About us:

Kent is a large and diverse county, offering a broad range of challenges and opportunities to support children and young people from a variety of backgrounds and circumstance. The Integrated Adolescent Service has been newly formed in recognition that adolescents should be given a bespoke offer of support. We want professionals capable of bringing understanding and emotional intelligence to everything they do. The service promotes a practice philosophy which seeks to empower young people and their families, building on individual strengths, and helping them to develop strategies which support them to understand, manage and respond to the difficulties they face.

This is an exciting time as you will be able to be part of shaping the future service and to contribute towards its longer term development.  In return, we offer an attractive benefits package, a competitive salary and a range of professional development opportunities with exciting of a social care academy and routes for progression. 

About the Adolescent Social Work Team:

ASWT are a  specialist  team that  offers  intensive  time limited social work support to adolescents and their families.  We work with the families  through complex situations where the perception from families and professionals may be  that  the young person  is displaying significant risk taking behaviour(s) that may cause people to be concerned  about them  and   where their family  may be feeling they are unable to cope.

Your role as an Adolescent Social Worker will involve providing intensive support, empowering young people and their families to develop effective long-term solutions to manage their family relationships and develop strategies to overcome the risks that adolescents face during this phase of their life.

Where it is not safe for young people to remain living at home we will continue to work with them,  their families,  their wider network to identify suitable safe alternatives.

The Service has just gone through a transformation, with the result being that there is closer integration between the teams that focus on adolescents (Youth Offending Service, Adolescent Social Work Teams and Adolescent Early Help units). There are opportunities for co-working and co-location and we have good relationships with key agencies including our partners within Housing, Education , Health,  and the Police to ensure our young people get the right level of service at the time they need it.  

About you:

With a degree in social work – CQSW, DipSW or equivalent – you must be HCPC registered and should have substantial and varied post-qualification experiences of working with children and families. Your experience should cover systemic practice, and you will need an in-depth understanding of legislative and policy frameworks, along with a willingness to learn and develop as a practitioner; being a team player is essential in any social work team.

You will be supported with good quality supervision and have excellent opportunities for professional development to manage a varied and complex caseload working with adolescents and their families.  We’ll support you to consolidate your skills and knowledge within a newly formed specialist adolescent service incorporating statutory social work, youth offending and early help teams.  You’ll develop areas of specialist practice, including trauma-informed practice and contextual safeguarding and bring your professional expertise to high profile and sensitive cases. You will work with families to sustain young people at home, build resilience and minimise the need for young people to become looked after. You will work with young people to help them build their independence and to thrive in supported accommodation.

These roles are in area teams and require you to be mobile throughout a wide operational area including travelling around the county of Kent and beyond to transport children and their belongings and be available to do so in an emergency.  You should note that public transport is rarely a viable option as your role will involve you transporting people and equipment to venues in very rural areas, often with limited public transport.

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

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.

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.