Social Worker Children's Social Care

Cheshire West and Chester Council is a place where everyone can Thrive – through our core values of Teamwork, Honesty, Respect, Innovation, Value for Money and Empowerment.

We want to recruit experienced, committed, creative, resilient Social Workers to join our Children's Social Care teams in across Cheshire West and Chester in all our three localities of Chester, Ellesmere Port and Winsford.

We will provide you with a supportive and collaborative working environment in modern and bright offices, where you can be assured of excellent management support and supervision where your personal career development and progression is actively encouraged. We meet regularly as a service to provide you with practice development sessions and reflection opportunities and you will be encouraged to participate in practice development.

We will offer you an excellent work-life balance, flexible and remote working arrangements.

You’ll get free parking at all our office locations, and we’ll pay your Social Work England Registration.

You’ll benefit from competitive working rewards and up to 16 days ‘flexi time’ per year as well as your annual leave of 26 days per year if you have less than 5 years continuous service and 31 days if you have over 5 years.  

We will offer re-location allowance in some circumstances, and our salaries are competitive.

Our Children's Social Care workforce is passionate and committed to improving outcomes for children, who are at the heart of everything we do, by providing a consistent, high-quality service to children and families. You will benefit from excellent working relationships with our partners and the support from a stable leadership and management team. We are committed to a culture of shared learning and development in which you will have an active part to play in the continued progress of our services to children and families.

We have developed and embedded ‘Our Way of Working’ with our multi-agency partners to ensure improved collaboration and one common approach to our work with families using Motivational Interviewing and Trauma Informed Practice.  We will support you in enhancing and developing your knowledge and skills to enable you to work creatively in planning and decision-making with children and their families and our partner agencies to achieve positive outcomes and with a focus on prevention at every level.

This is an ongoing recruitment programme and whilst the closing date for applications has been set, please note that applications will be considered as they are received and interviews arranged, so please don’t wait until the closing date if you are interested in applying.

We are recruiting to the following teams: -

Child in Need Teams, based in Chester, Ellesmere Port and Winsford.

Child Protection/Court Teams based in Chester, Winsford and Ellesmere Port

Permanence Teams (working with children who are ‘looked after’) based in Winsford and Ellesmere Port.

You will need experience in assessment and planning in child in need and/or child protection and/or working with children who subject to Care Proceedings’ and are 'looked after'.

Please see Job Description / Person Specification for essential requirements for the roles.

Grade 8- SCP 23- 28, £32,076 - £36,648

Grade 9- SCP 27- 31, £35,745 - £39,186

Grade 10- SCP 31- 35, £39,186 - £45,291

Our social workers will tell you: - They feel supported and part of a team. They have access to excellent training opportunities. Managers at Cheshire West and Chester strive to make Social Workers feel valued and recognised, they are approachable, available, and compassionate. Social Workers are encouraged and supported to be creative and strive for excellence. They feel valued and supported by their team, manager, and the senior managers.

Our commitment and investment in professional development means that most of our Senior Practice Leads, Team Managers and some Senior Managers have progressed within our own organisation.

As employers, we recognise that Cheshire West Council has a major role to play in improving the quality of life of its employees.  We have a ‘hybrid’ working arrangement which allows us to be more flexible in how we provide services to children and families and an enhanced work/life balance to our Social Workers. We are committed to agile flexible and mobile working and helping employees to maintain an effective balance between their work and home life by being more flexible and creative in the use of our time and maximising the use of technology, whilst at the same time ensuring we can come together as teams and with our support networks on a regular basis.

We have a strong and supportive political and senior leadership team with a wealth of experience and knowledge about children’s outcomes across the borough of Cheshire West and Chester.

If you would like to discuss the opportunities available, please contact Snr Manager Helen Doyle at  helen.doyle@cheshirewestandchester.gov.uk

Please note that this job is subject to a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check.

To find out more information about what it is like to work for Cheshire West and Chester Council including our rewards and benefits please see www.cwcrecruitment.co.uk

No candidate will meet every single requirement - if your experience looks a little different from what we've identified and you think you can bring value to the role, we'd love to learn more about you!

Cheshire West and Chester Council are committed to equality and diversity in employment.  Please see the Equality Policy for more information.

Cheshire West and Chester Council have adopted a Local Living Wage for our employees which means that all employees will receive a minimum of £12 per hour for all contracted hours.

For any technical enquiries please email Sourcingteam@ecwip.co.uk and quote job reference number in all correspondence.