ASYE Social Worker / Pay Band J / Fixed SCP 26 / Fixed term for 12 months upon appointment

Knowsley’s Children’s Services has been on an incredible journey, and we have done this being better together with a whole council approach! It’s been tough here at times, as we have worked through our OFSTED improvement journey from 2017. However, following a restructure there is a stable and increased management capacity to support social work practice and improvements.

However, we have a reputation as a good place to practice social work. Our latest OFSTED focused visit was positive, and we are now seeing the positive impact of the hard work undertaken since 2017, both for our workforce and for the children and families we serve.

Our services are stable, we have an experienced and committed stable senior leadership team under our DCS Julie Moss and are seeing that children and families are now receiving better services.

At the heart of this improvement has been our investment in social work practice and our social workers. Our shared sense of purpose is based upon the Knowsley Better Together values, culture and practice principals.

Our teams are small and strengthened by a Supervision Policy which enables a supportive relationship with your manager. We are committed to reducing our caseloads, enabling our social workers to spend time developing trusted relationships with children and their families.

Our staff care about Knowsley’s children and families, and we care about them.

Our ASYE programme is supported by an ASYE assessor for all ASYEs to ensure that there is consistent approach to learning and development for each ASYE that works in Knowsley. This assessor is based within the quality assurance team. We have a close working relationship with the Merseyside and Cheshire Teaching Partnership to ensure that as an ASYE you have enhanced support, advice, and guidance to develop during your first year in employment.

We value that our staff are fully committed and often work above and beyond- we’ve seen that even more during the Pandemic. In return we therefore offer a flexible approach to working including remote and home working and flexibility with working hours to allow you to meet your own family’s needs too.

If you would like to come and join us on the next stage of this journey please get in touch, you will be guaranteed invaluable experience, a manageable caseload, interesting work and good quality management support.

Child Protection Service

Social workers in our Child Protection Teams support children and their families via Child in Need Plans, Child Protection Plans and PLO Pre-Proceedings. Our small teams each have 5 social workers, a Advanced Social Worker and Team Manager. You will be supported to develop a relationship with your manager, have regular supervision, support from our Quality Assurance Team, excellent training opportunities and access to tools and resources to assist in your day-to-day work.

You will have the opportunity to develop trusting relationships with children and their families. Using our strength based Signs of Safety model and Knowsley Better together approach we support families to have great outcomes and prevent children’s needs from escalating.

Cared For Children Service

Supporting our children is all about ensuring children in our care receive an excellent parenting whatever setting they are living in with the same life chances as any other young person.

In this service you will find an experienced and stable management team managing small teams of 5 staff including a Advanced social work practitioner

The focus within the service is where you assess, review and support children and young people who live in long term care arrangements. This gives you the opportunity to get to know a Child/Young person and be part of their development and achievements looking to support them either to be reunified with family or a move through to independence.

Social workers within our Supporting Our Children teams are committed to supporting our children to have a great childhood and future outcomes. They support children to achieve a plan of permanence and ensure we discharge Care Order’s and achieve Special Guardian Orders for children, wherever is possible and safe to do so. You will have a passion for being an advocate and corporate parent for the children our care and committed to establishing longer term trusting relationships with them, and helping them to understand their unique life story.

At Knowsley Council we will consider requests for flexible working. For most roles, the following types of flexibility are usually possible: flexible hours, working from home, compressed hours, part-time.

For further details about the post, please contact Bec Gale on 0151 443 3346 or via email at [email protected]

CLOSING DATE - 28 May 2023