Practice Development Manager (Designated Social Care Officer)

How you'll make a difference:

Providing professional expertise as a Practice Development Manager (DSCO), you will ensure high quality social work practice within South Gloucestershire’s Children’s Social Care and Preventative Services.

Working with a range of specialisms and services, you will have a particular focus on strengthening collaboration between education, health and social care. You will work to generate solutions and implement strategies to improve outcomes for children and young people with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND).

What you will be doing:

• As the strategic lead, your primary focus will be framing the social care elements of the SEND strategy across South Gloucestershire, ensuring compliance with legislative requirements.
• Liaising with the Children’s Services Management Team (CSMT), you will ensure they are aware of developments in SEND and how these affect Children’s Social Care and Preventative Services. There is a requirement that you will attend the Southwest DSCO Regional Forum which meets quarterly, to network and share practice.
• Using your experience and knowledge, you will assist all staff across the service to develop greater awareness and understanding of the needs of children with SEND and be clearer about the way in which we should be working to achieve the best possible outcomes for them. This could include advocating for effective practice in relation to transitions.
• Where appropriate, you will coordinate and manage a system/data set for tracking all social care contributions to EHCPs including those for children with and without children’s services involvement. You will need to attend the weekly statutory SEND panel.
• It will be your responsibility for social care elements of the local authority’s self-evaluation process to ensure readiness for SEND Ofsted and CQC inspections. You will have a key role in the SEND inspection process on behalf of social care.
• You will deliver training and relevant workshops to multi-agency cohorts to develop services and increase the knowledge of SEND and social care in the wider professional community, for instance across education and health.
• Working with commissioners, you will ensure that local services address the social care needs of children and young people with SEND. This could include attendance at multi-agency panels such as MARP.

What we need from you:

• It is essential that you have a recognised and relevant professional qualification e.g. DipSW, CQSW, CSS and are registered with Social work England.
• We require you to have substantial relevant post qualification experience in a relevant setting, such as social care that must include experience of leading other professionals.
• You must have demonstrable evidence of skills, knowledge and experience to be able to assess and manage risk for the most vulnerable children in the community.
• To achieve optimum performance in delivering excellent social care services for children, you may be required to lead professional staff within teams that you do not directly manage and have the confidence to do so.
• Given the nature of this role, you must have the ability to think creatively and constructively to challenge the norm, for example existing practices, processes or protocols and be able to identify opportunities to improve or innovate the way services are delivered.

• This role is hybrid, with a mixture of working at our office in Yate and working from home.
• Please note that due to the nature of this role, it is a requirement of employment that an enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check is obtained.
• You will be expected to travel throughout the authority and surrounding area so you must have a full, valid driving licence with regular access to a vehicle or have an alternative means of travel.
• Business insurance will need to be added to your insurance policy.
• You can claim back mileage expenses.

Interviews anticipated 6th May 2025.

How a career at South Gloucestershire Council is different

What’s special here is the strength of the team ethos. We are a relatively small local authority, so managers know staff well. They can plan their services to ensure teams have manageable caseloads and have effective supervision so feel supported to make decisions which are right for the people they work with.

We know our team work best when they have balance in their lives and we offer genuine flexibility to help them achieve that work/life balance

We invest in the careers of our people and we are recognised for the quality, breadth and depth of our training and development offer, which helps our people make the greatest long-term difference in their work.

As part of our benefits package, you will receive generous annual leave (pro rata), employee wellbeing support and you will have access to a range of staff discounts, including eye tests, travel, shopping and leisure activities

We recognise that our diverse team of skilled and dedicated people make us a great place to work. We welcome applications from everyone and ensure that individuals are selected, promoted, and developed on the basis of their merits and abilities.

• We're building and shaping communities which people are proud of.
• We're working with the most vulnerable in our community to help them achieve what they want in life.
• We're investing in our schools to ensure every child and young person in South Gloucestershire achieves their full potential.

We've achieved a great deal, but we need talented and dedicated people to ensure we continue to make a difference.

We’re making a difference, be part of it!

To view the full job description, please click this link: Practice Development Manager DSCO Strat Safeguarding - job description