Social Worker

Role Responsibility

Qualified Social Worker – Integrated Adolescent Service

Do you recognise Adolescence as a difficult time? Do you have empathy for families of adolescents, who struggle to navigate the changes?

The Integrated Adolescent Service recognises that adolescents should be given a bespoke offer of support. Many of the young people we work with have experienced developmental trauma and disrupted attachments, resulting in them being vulnerable to extra familial harm.

We want professionals capable of bringing understanding and emotional intelligence to everything they do. The service promotes a practice philosophy which seeks to develop a secure trusting relationship 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.

Our practitioners need to be resilient and persistent; be solution-focussed; look past challenging behaviours; build positive relationships with adolescents and their carers, and to inspire young people to reach their potential.  Each team has a mixture of newly qualified social workers, experienced practitioners and social work assistants. We all work together to support each other and there are regular social activities and away days for learning and development. We value that  our staff are committed and often work above and beyond, we therefore offer a flexible approach to working including offices across the county, home working and flexible hours.

We have opportunities for experienced Social Workers to join our team in North Kent which covers Dartford and Gravesend. We want a practitioner who really cares about adolescents and who understands the impact of trauma, and how to respond to contextual harm. 

Our generous recruitment, relocation and retention package is up to £13,000 in the first year, with a salary up to £40,405 dependent on skills and experience.

About us:

AST are a specialist social work team within an Integrated Adolescent Service which includes Youth Justice, Early Help, Inclusion & Attendance and Youth Services.

AST offers intensive support to adolescents and their families to manage complex situations including extra familial harm and family conflict. AST focuses on young people who are at risk of being exploited. We work with young people facing a range of difficulties and challenges associated with the state of ‘adolescence’. We recognise that the more vulnerable the young person is because of the difficulties they experience, the greater the risk is that they may be exploited.

We offer co-working and co-location opportunities and we have excellent relationships with key partners including Housing, Education, Health and the Police.

Your role 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 and their families as well as their wider network to identify suitable safe alternatives.

We have invested heavily in our core offer to staff, including evidenced based training in case formulation, contextual safeguarding and trauma-informed approaches. As well as monthly personal supervision, we also offer clinical supervision on a bi monthly basis to practitioners and managers to allow them to confidentially discuss the impact of casework on their wellbeing.

About you:

With a degree in social work – CQSW, DipSW or equivalent – you must be BASW registered and should have substantial post-qualification experiences of working with children and families. You will need an in-depth understanding of legislative and policy frameworks, along with a willingness to learn and develop as a practitioner.

You will have excellent opportunities for professional development by managing a varied caseload working with adolescents and their families.  We’ll support you to consolidate your skills and knowledge, assisting you to develop areas of specialist practice, including trauma-informed practice and contextual safeguarding. You’ll share your previous knowledge and experience with the team in a number of ways, including assisted fieldwork, case audits and reviews. In addition, you’ll contribute to working groups and multi-agency forums to develop new initiatives.

These roles are in area teams and require you to be mobile throughout a wide operational area.

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.

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.

To view and download the job description and person specification for this role please click here.

Contact Details

For more information about this role please call the Adolescent Service Manager Ruth Bachrach on 03000 410013

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.