Senior Social Worker
Values Based Screener
At Hertfordshire Partnership Foundation Trust we are looking for people to join us who share our values and those of the NHS. Before your application can be considered please take part on our online values questionnaire, which you can find below.When you have finished you will be sent a 'completion code' by email, which will be valid for 6 months and required to submit your application form.
http://hpft.recruitforvalues.com/
Job overview
Our welcoming and supportive Community Mental Health Services for older people has the opportunity for a full-time Band 7 Senior Social Worker post within the multidisciplinary team. This is a fantastic post for an experienced social worker to join an equally experienced group of clinicians and practitioners to deliver specialist Mental Health services to older people with functional mental health conditions.
The post is supported by a team of nurses, a social worker, senior support workers, occupational therapists, specialist doctors/consultant psychiatrists, a clinical psychologist, and carers/support workers.
Main duties of the job
As a Senior Social Worker, this post will allow you to promote, lead and act under the principles of personalisation, working to promote well-being, and enabling individual rights to choice and control, in a multi-disciplinary mental health team.The older people's team in Hertfordshire provides social care support to older people over 65 years with functional mental illness, whilst the Adult care services support older people with dementias.
In this post, you will be a key champion and leader of social care within the the Northwest of Hertfordshire. You will support your junior colleagues to develop their skills to provide robust, consistent expert social care practice.
You will provide leadership in safeguarding decision-making and support the team in the delivery of the Mental Capacity Act. You will receive support from the professional leads for social care in the Trust. You will also participate in the senior leadership of the team including supporting the management of the Duty System on a Rota with colleagues and chairing of team and multidisciplinary meetings.You will have the opportunity to develop yourself professionally and share your skills through the team's continuous professional development programmes.
Working for our organisation
Hertfordshire Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust (HPFT) is an outstanding organisation with ambitions to match. We are one of just five mental health trusts to achieve an overall rating of ‘Outstanding’ from the Care Quality Commission, and our aim is to be the leading provider of mental health and specialist learning disability services in the country.
Our family of over 3500 members of staff provide health and social care for over 400,000 people with mental ill health, physical ill health and learning disabilities across Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, and Norfolk, delivering these services within the community and several inpatient settings.We also deliver a range of nationally commissioned specialist services including Tier 4 services for children and young people, perinatal services, plus medium and low secure learning disabilities services.
The care we provide makes a fantastic difference to the lives of our service users, their families, and carers. Everything is underpinned by choice, independence, and equality, with our Trust values embedded throughout:
Our Trust values are:
Welcoming. Kind. Positive. Respectful. Professional.
These values are at the core of who we are, everything we do, and how we do it!
Would you like to be part of the HPFT family? Would you like work with us to ensure our service users live the fullest lives possible they can? Would you like to be supported in your career to be the best that you can be?
Then please read on…
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
For full details please refer to the attached Job Description and Person Specification. You will be able to demonstrate skills to inspire, lead and manage staff in the delivery of the Care Act expectations for social care and safeguarding.
Job Summary
All Senior Social Workers must be registered with Social Work England.
As a Senior Social Worker, you will act as a champion and leader of social care and safeguarding within your locality. You will be expected to give robust, consistent, and expert social care practice advice in partnership with other specialist senior social care colleagues.
You will reinforce the need to deliver high quality, recovery-focused and cost-effective social care services to service users and their carers, focused on the principles of choice, control and independence, as well as ensuring safety.
You will actively address adversity and will support adults at risk of social inclusion and assist adults accessing support to deal with a range of adverse circumstances.
You will actively champion equality and diversity and be expected to challenge discrimination in all it’s forms as part of your role.
You will have a small caseload of complex cases and will provide supervision to both experienced and newly qualified social workers. You will support social workers in your locality to maintain constant reflection and development of their practice and will support their continuing professional development in line with the standards set out by the professional regulator, Social Work England.
You will be a practicing AMHP or prepared to undertake the training required to undertake the AMHP role. As an AMHP, you will provide advice, support, and supervision to other AMHPs.
You will be expected to work in partnership with service users and carers, so that they can feel empowered, and services can be improved as a result of feedback of their experiences.
Job Responsibilities- To be a champion of social care with a comprehensive understanding of legislation and statutory guidance.
- To maintain regular links and attend meetings with the corporate Social Work and Safeguarding Team, and keep up to date with accurate, consistent, and robust social care, legal and practice advice, and support to locality staff.
- To undertake the most complex assessments and reviews, for people who may present with a high risk, or those with significant interpersonal, social, legal and/or environmental complexities, ensuring people are assessed appropriately against social care eligibility criteria as defined by The Care Act 2014.
- To offer direct support to service users and their carers, and to colleagues, through information and advice, to ensure that those who do not meet social care eligibility are appropriately signposted and supported.
- To ensure that appropriate health and social care services are commissioned with and on behalf of service users, including the duty to offer direct payments, and that processes are in place for service users to be charged by the local authority for the social care services they receive, if applicable.
- To ensure that commissioned services allow choice to service users and carers and focus on people living in the community with appropriate support and access to universal services.
- To undertake regular risk assessments and ensure that vulnerable people are kept safe.
- To lead in the promotion of both child and adult safeguarding practice in line with current policy, and take a lead role in adult safeguarding investigations, including the chairing of strategy meetings and case conferences.
- To advise colleagues in best practice when undertaking carer assessments, including identifying contingency plans, and provision of support.
- To be skilled in partnership working and identify, develop, and facilitate a wide range of recovery-focused community services, ensuring that colleagues within the locality are also aware of developments and best practice.
- To ensure the involvement of service users and their carers to that the Trust can learn from their experiences to make improvements to service delivery.
- To ensure accurate computer records of all work undertaken are kept up to date.
- To undertake your own post qualifying and other appropriate training to ensure high standards of practice and continuation of your registration with Social Work England.
- To support the development of others in your team, including both experienced and newly qualified social workers, ensuring that they have regular access to continuing professional development.
- To provide both management and reflective supervision to experienced and newly qualified social workers.
- To support newly qualified social workers through the Assessed and Supported Year in Employment (ASYE), acting as an ASYE assessor and engagement in the ASYE moderation process.
- To undertake duties as an Approved Mental Health Professional (AMHP) or be willing to undertake AMHP training.
- To participate in your own regular supervision and ensure regular reflection on your own practice as both a social worker and AMHP.
- To undertake other tasks and duties which form part of the delegated social care responsibilities accepted by the Trust on behalf of Hertfordshire County Council.
- To adhere to Trust policies and procedures.
- To undertake additional training as required.
- To carry out any other duties as appropriately identified by your line manager.
Person specification
Experience
Essential criteria- An appropriate professional social work x qualification
- Registration with General Social Work England
- Education to degree level
- Masters Degree or equivalent training
- Approved Mental Health Professional training and qualification (or prepared to undertake training within a year of appointment)
- Relevant post-qualifying training for social workers
- Other post-qualifying training e.g. CBT, family therapy
- Best Interests Assessment training
Experience
Essential criteria- Minimum 5 years post-qualification experience with demonstrable evidence of excellent practice at advanced level
- Extensive knowledge of legislation, statutory guidance, theory, and policy in relation to adult and children’s social care
- Experience of undertaking assessment focused on personalisation, choice and control, and care planning
- Understanding of and experience of use of personal budgets and direct payments
- Experience of supervising and mentoring others
- Evidence of multidisciplinary and collaborative working
- Evidence of partnership working with service users and carers, demonstrating dignity and respect, particularly in very challenging situations
About us
Hertfordshire Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust (HPFT) is rated by the Care Quality Commission as an Outstanding provider of mental health and learning disability services. In 2021, we won the prestigious Health Service Journal award for Mental Health Trust of the Year, with the judges saying they were “blown away” by our people’s achievements and that everything they saw “sings and hums”.This year, our staff rated us the 4^th best mental health and learning disability trust to work for out of all 52 trusts in the country. Our staff tell us that they are proud to be part of the HPFT team, proud of the standard of care we provide and proud that service users are our top priority.
Our people tell us they feel supported though a great development, wellbeing and work-life balance offer and a highly compassionate, values-driven culture. We are equally proud of our staff, who live our values of being welcoming, kind, positive, respectful and professional so that together we provide great care and great outcomes for our service users and carers.
If you would like to join a team to be proud of and you share our values and passion for great care and outcomes for our service users and carers, we would love to hear from you.
Additional Information
HPFT is committed to being an equal opportunities employer and in order to reflect the diversity of its population, positively encourages applications from all areas of the community. We aim to be a representative organisation with regards to age, disability, ethnicity, gender, beliefs and sexual orientation and are fully committed to equality, diversity and human rights and encourage applications from all sections of the community including users of mental health services.
The Trust is committed to helping staff balance work and home life and welcomes applications from candidates wishing to work part-time or under flexible working arrangements.
Infection Control
All our staff will need to comply with current Infection Prevention and Control measures which could include wearing a mask on all our Trust sites and in all roles