Social Worker - Safeguarding and Care Planning in Surrey, Woking

Surrey aims to work alongside families, to respect families and their rights, to work with them in partnership and with their informed consent, to recognise their strengths and help them identify their needs. Our overarching duty is to promote the upbringing of children within their families, where this is compatible with the welfare of the children.

Social workers in Surrey will be supported to develop high levels of skill in motivational practice which they will use to help parents identify the aspects of their lives/behaviours that they want to change and provide the help and support to families, on a partnership basis, that they need to support them in their change.

• Triage of contacts to the service to ascertain whether contacts from families, members of the community and partner organisations meet the threshold for a statutory social work assessment of significant impairment of a child's health/development or significant harm, with appropriate information from referrers and the consent of the family (except when over-ridden by a team manager to protect a child from further significant harm).
• Provide an assessment of the needs of family members, their strengths and any risks to children's health/development or significant harm to the child and develop SMART plans that will meet the needs of family members and reduce risks to children, in conjunction with children and their families.
• Work with partners to meet those needs and monitor progress via child in need and core group meetings involving families, young people and relevant professionals.
• Conduct child protection investigations where a multi-agency strategy discussion considers there are grounds to believe the child has or is likely to suffer significant harm and involve families in developing plans for change which will reduce the risk of significant harm and keep children in their families wherever possible.
• Where children cannot be adequately cared for within their families or their families cannot be engaged to access services that would support them to change and the significant harm threshold is reached, initiate discussions to seek agreement for s20 or initiate planned or emergency legal proceedings to ensure children are protected in line with departmental policy, procedures and relevant legislation.
• Work with colleagues in commissioning, fostering and adoption to identify high quality placements for children that will promote keeping children with their siblings and engage in timely care planning so children are placed in stable long-term homes where their health and development as well as education and training needs are supported and they can strengthen their resilience to lead a happy and stable adult life.
• Ensure that social work case records, assessments, plans and documentation for all children and young people for whom the worker is responsible are effectively maintained in line with practice standards and organisational policy and procedure.
• Foster good relationships with legal services and local family courts to manage efficient and effective Legal Planning Meeting, Public Law Outline and court proceedings where attempts to support children to remain within their families have not been successful.
• Promote purposeful social work practice, following the service's parenting/group work programmes, and undertake regular clinical and case work supervision that is reflective and outlines clearly the next steps to improve outcomes for children, young people and families.
• Manage effective communication of practice, service and organisational issues within the team and work collaboratively across other social work teams, services and with partners to provide high-level integrated support to children and families.
• Ensure that in all aspects of work the views, feelings and wishes of children, young people and their parents/carers are taken seriously and used to appropriately inform their care plans and development and performance of services.

Provide high quality relationship based social work services to children and families at tier 4 level of Surrey Safeguarding Children Board's Effective Family Resilience criteria.

• Understand the forms of abuse and neglect that children can be exposed to and differentiate clearly between significant impairment and significant harm.
• Use motivational interviewing skills to try to engage parents in changing their behaviours that can cause impairment to their children's development or significant harm and engage appropriate adult services to support them to change.
• Undertake strengths based assessments of immediate and wider family members and engage them in developing plans that will meet the needs of children and that are SMART.
• Ensure plans are revised and reviewed regularly and inform manager of any escalations or risks and also any improvements.
• Ensure children looked after are placed in permanent alternative families as soon as it is ascertained that their needs cannot be met and that their wishes and feelings are included in plans.
• Ensure looked after children's health and development, their education training and preparation for independence are advanced and their needs for contact with family members, siblings and friends is prioritised.

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