Social Work Academy – Senior Practitioner

Location: Luton, Bedfordshire.
Hours per week: 37.
Salary: £31.00 per hour.
Start Date: Immediate Start.
Come and join us to make a difference for children and young people in Luton. Luton is a council that cares, where we work collaboratively with children and families. We are ambitious and determined to improve lives every day. We are open, honest and embrace difference. We are empowering our staff to trust our own decisions and those of others. We help each other’s to reach our full potential. We are passionate about helping you develop your career through regular supervision, coaching and mentoring. We are proud about our rapid achievements and have imbedded the agile improvement framework. We work SMART and we strive for the best.
We acknowledge Luton is currently on an improvement journey and that is the reason we need passionate, agile, dynamic, creative and inspiring qualified practitioners to join our Quality Assurance & Safeguarding Service at this important juncture. Luton’s Children and Families are at the heart of everything we do. Our undivided focus is on achieving good outcomes for children and young people by delivering high quality children’s social services across the borough.
We have five exciting opportunities available within our Children Services department to work as part of the Social Work Academy. This academy is a great opportunity to develop and give opportunities to develop your career in social work. This is a rewarding role where you will be supporting practice development of our ASYE’s through the academy. You will be promoting the academy and the fantastic career pathways at Luton.
You will be responding to service demand by holding a minimal complex caseload in order to support our NQSW’S and to cover any maternity leave and long term sickness when required within the team.

About you
We are looking for a qualified social workers with in-depth experience in the field of child and family social work. You’ll need experience of coaching and mentoring including practice teaching, however we do not require you to have a Practice teaching qualification. We need someone who has knowledge of children’s safeguarding and management of risk.
You’ll need to be able to demonstrate a high level of competence in the practice of child and family social work and be able to co-work with NQSW’s by guiding, challenging, advising and assisting. We need applicants with strong communication skills with a passion for building effective relationships with customers, staff, the public and other professionals.
Our ideal candidates will need to be able to negotiate, organise, prioritise and plan tasks and work to competing deadlines while meeting agreed targets. We need you to be confident in making and acting upon sound professional judgements based on levels of risk.
You will have the opportunity to develop on your already existing knowledge and understanding of current legislation, national guidance and best practice relevant to this role as well as knowledge of social care need of children and families.
We do ask that you have a recognised professional social work qualification (Degree, DipSW, CQSW or equivalent) and registered with the Social Work Regulator

Application process
Because of the nature of this job, it will be necessary for the appropriate level of criminal record disclosure to be undertaken. Therefore, it is essential in making your application you disclose whether you have any pending charges, convictions, bind-overs or cautions and, if so, for which offences. This post will be exempt from the provisions of Section 4 (2) of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exemptions) (Amendments) Order 1986. Therefore, applicants are not entitled to withhold information about convictions which for other purposes are ‘spent’ under the provision of the Act, and, in the event of the employment being taken up; any failure to disclose such convictions will result in dismissal or disciplinary action by the Authority. The fact that a pending charge, conviction, bind-over or caution has been recorded against you will not necessarily debar you from consideration for this appointment.

Additional information
Luton Borough Council is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and vulnerable adults and expects all staff to share this commitment.
Applicants must be willing to undergo child and/or vulnerable adults protection screening appropriate to the post, including checks with past employers and the Disclosure & Barring Service (DBS).