Havering

Havering is an outer London borough like no other. Sitting in Northeast London (Zone 6), we have three Crossrail stations in borough which means we are only 30 minutes from Oxford Street. We are well connected to the hustle and bustle of the city, whilst just a short drive or bus ride from the surrounding Essex countryside and coast, giving our residents the best of both city and rural living. 

It’s no wonder that we have one of the fastest growing and increasingly diverse child populations in the country, who benefit from living in one of the greenest areas in London. We have some amazing parks, 16 of which have green flag award status, and we are served by a rich mix of foundation, community, voluntary aided and academy schools with great Ofsted ratings.

Havering Town Hall, which hosts our main offices, is in the centre of Romford - our largest town and home to a vibrant street market dating back to 1247. Our offices are a 5 minute walk from the main shopping centres which host a range of popular shops, restaurants and gyms.

We are also unique in our political makeup, with Havering Residents’ Association working to make a Havering you want to be part of.

The vision for our People directorate is ‘Supporting our residents to stay safe and well’ and as such we are committed to helping Havering’s children and families to lead happy, healthy lives. This means ensuring that every child has equal opportunities to thrive, access the highest possible levels of education and enjoy a stable and happy home.

We firmly believe in empowering families to create sustainable change for themselves, allowing them to find their own solutions. Our aim is to provide services that are child-centred, collaborative, responsive, value-driven, and reflective.

Following our recent inadequate Ofsted inspection, we are embarking on an improvement journey where we will re-establish and reinvigorate great practice across all the services we deliver. As part of this journey, we are seeking dedicated and enthusiastic social care practitioners who are ready to make a meaningful difference, driven by a genuine desire to advocate for children, promote their well-being, and who are not afraid to take on the challenge of working for a local authority who have been inspected by Ofsted as inadequate. 

Our senior leaders have developed a comprehensive and robust improvement plan, which we will now deliver. If you are ready to embrace challenge as the next step in your career, and want to play a pivotal role in shaping our journey and truly improving outcomes for children, we want to hear from you.

We have recently restructured our safeguarding and corporate parenting service to better deliver and add capacity, with the aim of reducing caseloads. We have redesigned our service delivery to include a dedicated corporate parenting service to improve outcomes for children in our care and care experienced young people. As a result of these changes, we have a number of new and exciting roles on offer.

Choose Havering

Choose Havering is the Council’s commitment to creating an organisation that is the best it can be and asks employees to pledge to make positive choices every day, so we can achieve all our ambitions. You can find out more about Choose Havering here.

We are dedicated to creating the right conditions to support our social care practitioners to thrive and develop their skills in safe, nurturing environments. This is achieved through our 10 days of learning offer, access to our very own Social Care Academy and our Systemic offer. Through these, our practitioners are equipped with the resources and expertise to provide a systemic approach to achieve lasting effects through our Face-to-Face model of practice, leading to sustainable, positive outcomes.

We believe in fitting the system to the family, rather than asking the family to fit to the system.

Why choose Havering?

Are you passionate about making a positive impact on the lives of children, young people, and families? Do you have a strong desire to be part of a transformative journey that will shape the future of Havering’s community?

We invite you to join us in our mission to elevate our local authority's Children's Social Care Services, situated within our Starting Well Department. 

We value our employees, who are the driving force in our improvement journey. We therefore offer a range of benefits, including:

• ·    We are a family-friendly employer and welcome applications for part time roles at 0.5 full time equivalent
• ·    £4,000 annual market supplement payment for Social Workers, Advanced Practitioners, Team Managers and Service Managers
• ·    A tailored training programme along with development opportunities through our very own dedicated Social Care Academy and corporate offer of 10 days of learning per year
• ·    Access to accredited systemic training and in-house practice application workshops
• ·    A commitment to achieving and maintaining manageable caseloads
• ·    Generous local government pension scheme and leave entitlement
• ·    Subsidised parking at various council-owned car parks across the borough
• ·    Modern workplace equipped with the latest technology
• ·    A strong corporate health and wellbeing offer, discounted gym membership, employee assistance programme and much more
• ·    Annual staff recognition schemes (STAR awards and Social Care awards) celebrating and recognising staff commitment and achievement 
• ·    Access to a range of staff forums including LGBTQI+, B.A.M.E., Faith, Ability, Women’s, and Men’s forums.

Havering is a wonderful place to start or continue your social care career and we invite you to join us on our journey.

If you’re looking to apply for a role within Havering Children’s Service, or have any questions about applying, contact Talent Team: Talent@havering.gov.uk