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Salary range: £33,820- £40,478 per annum (up to £44,539 per annum for Senior Practitioners)

Work location: Oxford, North Oxfordshire, South Oxfordshire

Hours per week: 37 - we are open to discussions about flexible working

Contract type: Permanent and Temporary

Vetting requirements: This role is subject to a Criminal Records Check.

Closing date: This is an open-ended advert and applications will be reviewed on an ongoing basis as and when received. The advert will close once we are able to fill the positions. We therefore strongly encourage you to apply as soon as possible.

Oxfordshire County Council is looking to recruit experienced Social Workers for the exciting new Family Solutions Plus teams

We currently have a small number of opportunities for Newly Qualified Social Workers in our FSP teams.

If you are interested in NQSW vacancies, please contact us at [email protected] and we will contact you to discuss any vacancies we may have.

Getting it right for children and families

Oxfordshire County Council is committed to helping children and families lead better lives. That’s not just something we say; it’s who we are and what we do.

We’ve been consistently rated as “good” by Ofsted, but we are not content with that; we are ambitious and want to do even better! At a time when many local authorities are facing financial cuts, Oxfordshire has made significant investments into children’s services, to support the implementation of a new, transformational model - Family Safeguarding Plus (FSP). We’re transforming the way we help our frontline social workers support our children and families to get the best outcomes possible for each and every child and family we work with.

Please watch the following videos to learn more about us:

• About Family Solutions Plus
• Working for OCC Children's Services

We recently hosted a webinar, a recording of which you can watch by clicking here. We also recently featured on an episode of the Upfront About Social Work podcast, which you can listen to by clicking here.

A message from Hannah Farncombe - Deputy Director of Children’s Social Care

“Our new way of working in Oxfordshire will bring swift help to families, delivered by workers who really get to know and understand them. Children’s interests are at the forefront of our hearts and minds, but we’re also creating teams in which practitioners get to do the quality work they only dreamt of doing in other authorities. We have great staff and managers and I want to continue attracting the best recruits to our service.”

Our new approach

Family Safeguarding Plus is comprised of locality-based, multi-disciplinary teams of professionals including specialist adult practitioners, working together to support children and their families. Our new teams bring together Social Workers, Children’s Practitioners, adult mental health, substance misuse and domestic abuse workers to work collaboratively to achieve best outcomes for children and families.

• Motivational interviewing is at the heart of our new model; we are committed to engaging families using a strength-based, solution-focused approach.
• Our practice model will use a single structured ‘workbook’ approach to assess parents’ capacity for change, reducing the volume of recording for social workers.
• All practitioners will participate in regular group supervision led by managers, so that risk is assessed, tackled and owned collectively.

The development of our new FSP teams has created a number of vacancies; we are looking for Social Workers and Assistant Team Managers to join us and help shape our teams; it’s a really exciting time to join us!

About the role – Social Worker / Senior Practitioner

We’re looking for passionate and motivated social workers who are excited by new approaches to delivering support to families and children to join us on our journey in one of our pioneering new Safeguarding teams.

You’ll bring with you a proven track record of safeguarding work with children in need of help and protection alongside sound knowledge of services relevant to children, young people, families, carers, groups and partner agencies. A Social Work Qualification and registration with Social Work England, with relevant post-qualifying experience are essential for this role.

Please click here to read the full Job Description and Person Specification

Your development

We love developing our social workers in Oxfordshire, and that’s why our career progression scheme supports social workers with a few years’ relevant practice experience to move into Senior Practitioner roles. We don’t limit the number of senior practitioners in each team – the more the better! If you’d like to hear more about our career progression arrangements, please contact us.

Oxfordshire have invested in significant training and professional development to help our teams develop good quality restorative relationships with the families they work with. Through our Social Care Academy, we offer our social care practitioners outstanding, aspirational learning and development opportunities to ensure that everyone is enabled to reach their true potential and thrive in their careers. These might be anything from training to reflective coaching, aimed at developing the knowledge and skill that helps individuals to follow their chosen career pathway. We recognise that social care can be fast paced and challenging, so we want to promote well-being through learning too.

Our benefits offer

We know that working in children’s social care can be an absolute pleasure and privilege, whilst also acknowledging the challenges. We are committed to ensuring that our social care workforce has the right support physically and emotionally to enable them to be safe and well in their work and to continue providing high quality support to children and families.

Our benefits for Social Workers include:

• Competitive salary from £33,820- £40,478 (up to £44,539 per annum for Senior Practitioners)
• Golden Hello – a welcome bonus of £3,500 for experienced social workers
• Relocation allowance of up to £8,000
• Annual leave allowance starting at 29 days per year (plus bank holidays)
• Professional sabbatical
• Pension - up to 20% employer contribution
• Flexible working – full or part time hours available and agile working policy
• Childcare vouchers, cycle to work scheme, staff discount scheme for a range of retailers, holidays, insurance, restaurants, health & leisure activities and rail travel.

Interested in joining us?

You can quickly and easily register your interest by clicking APPLY NOW. You can also contact us – by emailing your CV to [email protected]. We are a locality-based service, delivering early help and social work support to families in the areas where they live; if you have a preferred workplace location within the County, please state this on your application.

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If you experience any technical difficulties whilst completing the application form, please contact the Recruitment Team using Recruitment Application Enquiry Form.