Advanced Social Worker – Placements – Croydon Council
Salary: Grade 14 (£51,522- £53,607)
Permanent – 36 hours per week
Hybrid working
Job Purpose
Croydon Children’s Social Care have been going through transformation. One of the areas we have made great strides forward in is the service which finds homes for our Children Looked After and Care Experienced Young Adults. We believe that nobody’s children live in placements. Our children live in homes where they are loved and cared for. We want exactly the same for our CLA and CEYA. So our service is called Homefinding.
Over the last year or so we have pulled together a team with sufficient management capacity and staff resource to be able to give the time and attention to finding homes the attention it deserves. We now want to complete the process by creating a fully permanently staff service.
You will be one of the 2 Registered Social Workers in the service. As an experienced social worker who has worked in Homefinding, Fostering or frontline social work including Children Looked After, you will have expertise in matching children’s needs to carers. You will be passionate about ensuring that children have stability which comes from settled homes. You will have or be willing to develop negotiating skills and work in a relational way understanding that this is the best way to secure positive outcomes. You will be comfortable visiting and quality assuring provision and with supporting Homefinders thinking about how to find the best home for the children they are leading the search for.
We expect children and families in Croydon to receive outstanding services from our social work staff. We want our staff to have high expectations and high challenge of their practice and each other. It’s an exciting time to be joining us. To meet the changing needs of our children and families we have invested in creating the conditions for social work to flourish. We have an exciting opportunity for a Social Worker to join Croydon in our Placements Team. There has never been a greater focus on children’s services in Croydon than right now, making it an exciting place to take the next step in your social work career.
Essential Requirements
Qualified and experienced Social Worker with Social Work England registration.
Knowledge of national policy, strategy and developments regarding children’s social care, and areas that impact on children’s social care.
Experience of working with children (placements team would be an advantage).
Knowledge of relevant legislation, statutory guidance, standards and procedures.
Able to maintain records that evidence our engagement with children and families, informs the quality assurance framework e.g., quantitative, qualitative and outcome information for the children and families, the views and experiences of children and families.
Home to 94,000 children, Croydon is a truly unique place to practice social work. We are a borough with big ambition, grit, and determination. Children's social care was judged ‘good’ in our last Ofsted inspection.
Our systemic practice framework places emphasis on relationships as key to supporting change for families. We make sense of the world through relationships, focusing on the whole family system and thinking about our own part in that too – what we bring, our own family stories and beliefs, how we use ourselves in the work that we do. Our practice model is all about collaboration - with our families, networks and partners; being open to challenge and ensuring our practitioners are highly trained in a variety of intervention approaches. Our established clinical service will support you to grow your own systemic practice within the service, providing accredited training, co-working and direct work with families.
For an informal chat about working in Croydon, contact Agata Stolowska at agata.stolowska@croydon.gov.uk