Senior Social Worker - Access and Referral Hub

Team: Access and Referral Hub / MASH

Job Family: Supporting – CBG11 

Salary: £39,769 - £42,922 per annum pro rata + £5,150 MRS per annum pro rata + £4,350 enhanced MRS per annum pro rata

Hours:  x2 positions available:

1 Full Time 37 hours per week 15 month Fixed Term position (Secondment considered)

1 x3 days a week 22.2 hours a week - Permanent position

Location: Working from home and Priory House, Shefford. You will be expected to attend Priory House on a twice weekly basis (full time) and once weekly basis (part time) and as needed to carry out your role

Contract type: Hybrid - Fixed term & Permanent - as above. 

Closing Date: 24th November 

Interview Date: W/C 2nd December

About the role

Central Bedfordshire Council is excited to offer an opportunity for two Senior Social Workers within our Integrated Front Door (IFD/MASH). This is a multi-agency and Integrated team at the Front Door of Children’s Services delivering an innovative and inspiring way of bringing services together to best benefit children, young people and families.

We are proud to share that the IFD has recently (October 2024) won the National Children and Young People’s award for partnership working because of the way in which we work alongside internal children’s services departments and partner agencies. The judges said ‘The Integrated Front epitomises effective partnership working and serves as an amazing initiative bringing agencies together under one roof’

The IFD provides a single point of contact for reporting concerns about child safety and wellbeing, bringing together agencies and departments to enable ‘real-time’ sharing of information and support, helping families to access the support they need at the right time. We help vulnerable children who may benefit from additional Universal Services to Early Help services as well as children in need of social work support, protection and care. We work closely with a wide range of professionals; Education, Children’s Centres, Community Partners, Education Health Care (SEND), Early Years SEND, Youth Services as well as professionals from partner agencies; Police, Health, IDVA, KIDVA and Drug and Alcohol Services.  

There is significant development within this service (widening, strengthening, and embedding our integrated offer). Therefore, this role offers the opportunity to be a part of a developing service and as such this will be an important part of this role. If you are interested in a role which means that you can be part of a programme of development, ensuring that families get the best possible service from the start of their journey when seeking or needing support, then this role will fit you well. 

As a Senior Practitioner you will be required to work collaboratively with our integrated and partner agencies as part of the IFD (MASH). Your role will be to provide appropriate advice and guidance and participate in multi-agency assessment and analysis, resulting in clear recommendations for children and families. You will also hold additional responsibilities which will support the functioning of the team. 

Essentially for this role you will have Senior Social worker experience within a statutory safeguarding team or significant experience at a Social Worker level within a safeguarding or MASH team and have clear and sound knowledge of applying safeguarding procedures and making threshold recommendations. You will also have the communication skills to work with other agencies and present high-quality reports.  

Your day-to-day role will involve:

• Screening high level contact referrals
• Analysing risk on safeguarding referrals and making recommendations about what level of support children and families need
• Providing support and guidance to qualified and otherwise qualified workers and supervising Referral and Advice Officers
• Completing additional tasks such as leading on workstreams or programmes of development for the team
• Completing additional tasks such as Court requests, liaising with other Local Authorities and completing information requests

This is a great time and opportunity to join Central Bedfordshire Council. In February 2024 we underwent a rigorous focussed Ofsted inspection visit, this outlined a significant improvement in service delivery from what was a ‘good’ outcome previously. We are on our way to achieving Outstanding and our consistent aim is to be achieving this day in, day out, for the children and families whose lives we have the privilege to be supporting. To do this we need outstanding workers so that we can continue this journey to get the recognition of providing that outstanding service to the children and families of Central Bedfordshire.

Our Offer

We have a number of rewards and benefits available to our staff, to view these please visit our Rewards and Benefits page

Our aspiration is to be a truly flexible employer.  We welcome discussion on location, hours and working pattern as part of the application process.

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You will be expected to demonstrate how you meet the key accountabilities and competencies in this Recruitment Pack.

Our Competency Framework and Qualification Guidance are to be read in conjunction with our Recruitment Pack.

For an informal discussion about these positions, please contact: Davina Quinlan at davina.quinlan@centralbedfordshire.gov.uk or Michelle Allen michelle.allen@centralbedfordshire.gov.uk on 0300 300 5258 / 0300 300 6542.

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Safeguarding:

Central Bedfordshire Council is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults and expects all employees, volunteers and contractors to share this commitment. This post is subject to the disclosure of criminal records.  

To maintain a fair and consistent approach for applicants, it is Central Bedfordshire Council's policy to only consider applications made via our online application system and we therefore thank you for not submitting your application offline.

Our National Careers Service team offer a free weekly workshop covering CV writing and how to complete the statement sections of the Central Bedfordshire Council online application form. This MS Teams workshop is open to anyone from the UK and lasts around 1.5 hours.  Please book your place here.

More information about this service can be found here: Support getting into work or learning | Central Bedfordshire Council