Senior Social Worker
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 its 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 Responsibilities1. To be a champion of social care with a comprehensive understanding of legislation and statutory guidance.2. 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.3. 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 2014.4. 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.5. 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.6. 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.7. To undertake regular risk assessments and ensure that vulnerable people are kept safe.8. 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.9. To advise colleagues in best practice when undertaking carer assessments, including identifying contingency plans, and provision of support.10. 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.11. 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.12. To ensure accurate computer records of all work undertaken are kept up to date.13. 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.14. 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.15. To provide both management and reflective supervision to experienced and newly qualified social workers.16. 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.17. To undertake duties as an Approved Mental Health Professional (AMHP) or be willing to undertake AMHP training.18. To participate in your own regular supervision and ensure regular reflection on your own practice as both a social worker and AMHP.19. 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.20. To adhere to Trust policies and procedures.21. To undertake additional training as required.22. To carry out any other duties as appropriately identified by your line manager.