Senior Social Workers (SSWs) have a vital case holding role delivering high quality interventions to best serve our children and families. We have 3 intervention services, with service consisting of 4 teams of 5 social workers and 1 smaller team led by an Assistant Team Manager. Our large workforce is intended to keep caseloads manageable, allowing social workers time to work with families with CiN or CP plans.
We value our Senior Social Workers and understand the importance of supporting your learning, development and ambition, as well as your wellbeing. With this in mind, in the S&I Service we recognise the rewards as well as the challenges that the nature of the work brings. We have a bespoke offer through our very own clinical service, and our embedded systemic family psychotherapist assists with interventions where required. SSWs in intervention may also be assisted by Practice Development Social Workers and a contextual safeguarding service that support social workers with complex cases and use joint-thinking to reach positive outcomes for families. We’ve worked hard to provide a supportive environment where systemic, restorative practice can flourish.
We’ve been working hard to make Newham a great place to practise.
We’re a GOOD local authority and have established a centre of excellence for Children’s Services.
Ofsted reported that we have OUTSTANDING senior leadership.
Stability: 100% of our Service 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.
We offer genuine flexible working, with only 1 day in the office per week (off duty)
Career progression; we’ve promoted 37 internal colleagues in the past 2 years.
Social Care Academy – 47 social workers have studied for systemic higher education with us since 2020.
A competitive package of up to £54,890 (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.
You have at least 3 years’ post qualified experience and an understanding of working effectively within a diverse, urban community. You share our ambition and energy in embracing new ways of working. You have high working standards and are conscious of your own professional development and that of those around you, especially less experienced and student social workers starting out on their social work careers. You are always open to learning and to helping others learn so that children and families can benefit from our best practice. You have experience working with families at various stages of CiN and CP plans, and will be able to comfortably discuss outcomes you’ve achieved for familes if taken forward to interview.
We’re looking for people who 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.
You will be a qualified social worker who is registered with Social Work England.
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:
