Social Worker (Assessment Service)

Social Worker - Grade 7/8 - £38,607- £47,805pa (Plus £4,000 annual MS payment)

If job satisfaction means being supported by your manager, senior managers and leadership team, then Havering is the right place for you. Having a strong level of management support is just one of the many things that we are known for and is highly valued by our workforce. 

We are passionate about creating the right conditions to support our social care practitioners to thrive, whether through our Face to Face model of practice, health and wellbeing initiatives or learning and development opportunities. 

Why choose Havering?

• Competitive salary of up to £51,800 inclusive of annual £4,000 market supplement
• Subsidised parking at various council-owned car parks across the borough
• Generous local government pension scheme
• Access to a range of health and wellbeing activities and initiatives
• Training and development opportunities through our very own dedicated Social Care Academy specific to children’s and adults social care
• Access to accredited systemic training
• And much more

You can find out more about working for Havering Children’s Services by visiting www.havering.gov.uk/cypsjobs.

APPLICANT IS REQUIRED TO HAVE A CURRENT SOCIAL WORK ENGLAND REGISTRATION WITH 2 OR MORE YEARS SOCIAL WORK EXPERIENCE.

About us

At Havering Council, we are committed to achieving excellent outcomes for children, young people and families. Our vision centres on supporting Havering’s children and families to lead happy, healthy lives. This means ensuring that every child has equal opportunities to thrive – accessing the highest possible levels of education and enjoying a stable, happy home. We believe firmly in empowering families to create sustainable change themselves, allowing them to find their own solutions.

We provide systemic care with lasting effects through our Face to Face model of practice – achieving sustainable positive outcomes. Havering’s ethos is embodied by our approach to fitting the system to the family rather than asking the family to fit to the system. This is done by working collaboratively with children, young people and families by having ongoing conversations so they can receive the most effective forms of intervention. With your expertise and motivation to support our children, young people and families, Havering is the ideal place for your social work career.

Havering is a fantastic place to live and work! Benefiting from excellent transport links, being only 18 minutes from London Liverpool Street Station, with our Town Hall campus located centrally in Romford, making our offices easily accessible via the M25, A12, A406 and A127.

About the role

The Assessment Service is led by Helen Harding, finalist at the Social Work Awards 2022 in the Team Leader of the Year category. The Service consists of 4 teams who work on a duty rota basis, each covering a duty week once every 4 weeks with roughly 9 people in each team, made up of a Team Manager, Advanced Practitioners, Social Workers and ASYE Social Workers. The Managers and Advanced Practitioners in the Service are permanent and provide great stability and direction for their teams.  Our primary responsibility is to offer parenting and family assessments for families who have complex and additional needs while working with our partner agencies to help families keep children safe. The families we assess often present with a range of complex issues. An essential part of our approach is understanding intergenerational factors affecting parental capacity and using our systemic model of practice to build resilience within families.

We place a strong emphasis on safeguarding children, assessing risks and providing early intervention through collaboratively working with family, working in close partnership with schools, community health, the voluntary sector and other partners to develop and provide preventative and targeted support. As a service we ensure that the voice of the children and their lived experience are captured in the assessment.

We promote a hybrid model of working for our social care staff, with a flexible approach involving working from our town hall campus/hubs. In this role, you are expected to work from our town hall campus during your teams duty week, for team meetings and other development days – and at the request of your manage. We are encouraging increased face-face working for teams as we know how important this is for social workers.

Our services are diverse, and we have exciting and stimulating opportunities for everyone and various career pathways you can explore. No two days are ever the same, as you’ll be working with a number of children, young people and families who are all facing different and at times complex situations.

About you

As a social worker in Havering, you will feel comfortable with and have substantial experience managing defined caseloads and working collaboratively to facilitate high support and high challenge through co-production. As well as being passionate about utilising creative means of engagement and collaboration in order to achieve the best possible outcomes for children, young people and families in need of support.

However, these are not the only skills and characteristics we are looking for. To be shortlisted for the position, you must be able to clearly ev