Children's Social Workers in Sheffield

Working in the Private and/or Public Law teams, Children's Social Workers (or as we will professionally call you - Family Court Advisers) are involved in a combination of cases where either the families require assistance to agree on the best arrangements for the welfare and safety of the child(ren) involved or the local authority has serious concerns and requests the involvement of Cafcass in the case.

Children's Social Workers key responsibilities include:

• Conducting assessments and directly engaging with children to understand and represent their views and wishes to the court.
• Using expertise in robust risk assessment and mediation to advocate for arrangements that prioritise the best interest of the children.

Relevant Social Work qualification is essential. You must be registered with Social Work England regulator. You'll ideally have a minimum of 3 years' experience working with children and families in a social work capacity. Experience in Family Court proceedings and understanding of Private and/or Public Law would be an advantage.

Organised and resilient with the ability to work independently and manage workload effectively. While you may see these roles have a contractual base in our Sheffield or Hull offices, our teams work flexibly and remotely; your proximity to the office doesn't always have to be a critical consideration. This hopefully will allow you to work in a way that suits you best.

We provide the resources, equipment, and support, so that individually and collectively, we can be the voice of children and young people when the family court makes critical decisions about their futures. We provide extensive wellbeing support for colleagues, as well as excellent benefits, all of which we hope encourages you to work within our dedicated team.

Be Their Voice. We are Cafcass - the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service - and we represent children in family court cases in England. Independently advising the family courts about what is safe for children and in their best interests, we speak up for over 130,000 children every year when the family court makes critical decisions about their futures, ensuring their needs, wishes and feelings are heard.

If our purpose resonates with you, and you share our ambitions for children - exceptional experiences, for every child, everywhere and every time - then if you join us, you will work alongside like-minded people in a diverse, inclusive and supportive organisation. You will be trusted to work flexibly and independently using outstanding technology (e.g. touchscreen laptops, iPhone, all with first class support, including IT Trainers) with access to substantial resources (e.g. Cafcass Library has over 27,000 resources on social work, child protection and related topics). You will also have opportunities to develop, whatever team you join, wherever you are in the country and at whatever stage you are at in your career.

The wellbeing of our colleagues is something we are truly passionate about, as demonstrated by everyone having four dedicated, additional days per year when they are encouraged to spend time focusing on their health and wellbeing. Colleagues can also have a health and wellbeing cash plan, for which Cafcass pays the basic premium (you can upgrade to include family members), which allows them to claim back some costs of routine health expenses, including dental check-ups, eye tests, physiotherapy sessions and more. Overall, we foster a holistic approach to supporting our colleagues, benefitting physical, mental and financial health.

This is led by a dedicated in-house team, the benefits of which include meaning support is targeted and specific to what colleagues need. Our team can also offer support and guidance when it comes to specific health conditions, such as neuro-diverse conditions, cancer and the menopause. Our wellbeing offer is further strengthened by an external Employee Assistance Provider (EAP) which provides a free confidential support service 24 hours a day. This means access to clinical and professional expertise which gives you a chance to talk about all kinds of work and personal issues.

If this wasn't enough, we are especially proud that over 125 colleagues have completed training and receive ongoing support to act as Health and Wellbeing Champions. Furthermore, we have nearly 100 people that have trained to be Mental Health Allies.

Diversity is important to us. We represent children and families from diverse backgrounds and having a diverse workforce helps us to fulfil this responsibility authentically. It also helps us to grow, evolve and innovate, so we particularly welcome applications from individuals from diverse backgrounds as we strive to ensure our workforce reflects the diversity of the children and families we work with.

We are proud to be a disability confident leader, we invite you to join our team, we are committed to actively attract and recruit individuals with disabilities including "non-visible" disabilities and mental health conditions. Our inclusive and accessible recruitment process means we aim to accommodate reasonable adjustments as needed. This commitment highlights our dedication to employing, training, retaining, and developing the careers of our colleagues with disabilities.

Our Diversity Networks provide a safe space for colleagues with shared aspects of identity and lived experience - supported by allies across the organisation. The networks help ensure we provide an inclusive working environment and a service which promotes the diversity and uniqueness of children and families from all backgrounds.

Our current networks include:

• Kaleidoscope Network: Colleagues from Black Asian and Minority Ethnic backgrounds.
• Mental Health Network: Colleagues who experience or have an interest in Mental Health issues.
• Pride Network: Colleagues who identify as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans - LGBT+.
• Neurodiversity Network: Colleagues who are neurodivergent, or support someone who is.

Together 'Together with Children and Families' (which we just call 'Together') is the name of our relationship-based practice framework. It applies to the work of every individual in Cafcass, from Social Workers to Leaders and includes our Corporate and Business Support teams. It is at the heart of what we do and is made up of our values, how these values work in practice, the tools to use to incorporate these values in our work and the impact this will have on the children and families we serve.

This framework encourages us to be pro-active and to look for the strengths in ourselves and others. It also enables us to build positive relationships with our colleagues, our partners and most importantly, with the children and families with whom we work.