Join us at our online recruitment event in January:
SIGN UP FOR OUR ONLINE RECRUITMENT EVENT (22/01/2025) HERE
The Family Support and Safeguarding service enhances the family led, relational values that were already at the centre of our practice and will continue the evolution of our firmly embedded Circles of Support practice model. We’re keeping children at the heart of everything we do whilst improving the overall experience of the families, partners, and social workers in our sphere. We want to be at the forefront of evoking positive
change in the sector and we’re looking for experienced, committed, relational social workers to join us and help us get there. Above all, we want to do the best for Newham’s children and families.
The FSS service consists of four services and sixteen teams, supporting families from first point of contact and assessment and throughout any subsequent longer term intervention (e.g. referral to partners, CP, CiN) until the best, safest outcome is for the child is attained. Two of these teams will work exclusively with children and families whose lives are influenced by disability or SEND to ensure that we retain the expertise necessary to support these families. Where proceedings are necessary court work is moved on to our Children in Care service.
Senior Social Workers in the FSS service are caseholding and will be on duty 1 week in 16; we hope this will be a welcome change for social workers who are used to busy assessment services, and a positive CPD opportunity for practitioners whose experience is mainly in longer term work. There will also be CPD opportunities for senior social workers to line manage and support less experienced colleagues, students, and NQSWs; bridging the gap between family facing practice and management whilst enhancing their CVs.
Please apply ASAP as we may interview before the closing date.
We are looking for qualified, SWE registered Senior Social Workers with several years’ post qualifying experience within a statutory children’s social work service. It’s essential that applicants understand the value of working with families from first point of contact to completion and are enthusiastic about this way of working. We’re also keen to meet practitioners who value their own CPD, will make the most of our academy offer and are excited about the prospect of working with management to embed good practice and support colleagues at the early stages of their career.
We’re looking for conscientious, considerate and empathetic people, who are committed to working relationally with families whilst putting every child’s welfare, potential, and future at the heart of their work. Newham is committed to our workforce being representative of the families we work with, to enhance cultural competence and adjust our practice to suit the individuals we serve. We are looking for colleagues who share our values and are passionate about tackling disproportionality wherever they find it and building a Fairer Newham.
You will have a genuine interest in a restorative, relationship based practice model, drawing on systemic thinking to inform your approach to building effective relationships with children, families and communities. We’d love to hear from social workers who are keen on learning and growing with us over a number of years and as an employer we’ve been working hard to provide the development our practitioners need and want. Our Academy offer has been commended by Ofsted and we promoted 38 internal colleagues in children’s social care in 2024.
If you share our values and dedication to families, we'd love to hear from you.
We’re a vibrant, dynamic, culturally rich London Borough with a young population and limitless potential. We’re a challenging yet rewarding place for social work practise to flourish and we are steadfastly committed to our workforce being representative of the families that we work with. We are taking coordinated, meaningful and focused action to develop an inclusive culture because we believe this is at the heart of enabling diversity in all respects, including diversity of thought. We are taking positive actions to challenge all forms of discrimination and injustice to help make Newham a fairer and more equitable place for children and families to live, learn and thrive.
We’re building a fairer Newham through investment, co-production and by continuously developing our 'Circles of Support' practice model; centring on systemic and restorative practice and a specialist support offer for our practitioners. Ofsted described Newham as having a positive culture of learning and development and we always try to develop talent in-house. We promoted 30 internal colleagues in 2023 alone, and have put more than 47 practitioners through further education since 2020. We value your development and at Newham career progression is a reality for many of our colleagues.
We understand that social work can be a challenging yet ultimately very rewarding profession that makes demands of you personally and professionally. In Newham we value your wellbeing and we aim to ensure that you have a better work/life balance through a remote working offer when you are not visiting children and families, a modern office space for when you’re on site, a flexible working policy where all requests are considered, and a clinical offer to support you to do your best work.
We’ve been working hard to make Newham a great place to practise social work:
- A commitment to addressing disproportionality wherever we find it.
- We’re a GOOD local authority focused on reaching excellence.
- We offer genuinely flexible/hybrid working as long as children and families are supported.
- Stability: 100% of our Senior Managers and 71% of Team Managers are permanent.
- Our firmly established practice model, Circles of Support, was recently nominated for the prestigious MJ Award for Innovation in Children’s Services and allows systemic, restorative practice to flourish.
- Career progression; we promoted 30 internal colleagues in 2023.
- Social Care Academy – 47 social workers have studied for systemic higher education with us since 2020. Our Academy offer received significant praise from Ofsted.
- A competitive package for social workers of up to £57,116 (includes market supplement).
- Oyster card/parking permit for business use.
- Wellbeing service, leisure and discount benefits (Council scheme).
- Travel season ticket loan, cycle scheme, Local Authority pension.