Family Drug and Alcohol Court Social Worker in Gloucester

Gloucestershire Children's Service are looking for an FDAC Social Worker to join the Tewkesbury Children and Families team. In our recent inspection in June 2025, our Children's Services have been officially judged as 'Good' with 'Outstanding' elements. Ofsted also said 'Leaders have set out a clear vision for delivering success for children, by modelling values and creating a culture where the workforce, children and families feel valued and heard; risk is managed confidently with bottom lines clearly set out.' This marks an important step in our journey to improve outcomes for our children and young people, and we remain focused on our mission: to continue building on this success and ensure that every child and young person in our county has the opportunity to thrive.

Gloucestershire offers a range of opportunities to develop your career, supported by a phenomenal Social Work Academy offer, a developing systemic practice methodology, an ambitious leadership team and an award-winning workforce. We are a local authority adopting, and training all colleagues in, systemic social work practice. If you would like to be part of an authority that takes a relational approach to working with families and focuses on what needs to change in the system around a child and family to enable children to thrive, then consider a role with GCC.

We are looking for an FDAC Social Worker to cover our Tewkesbury locality. You will hold an FDAC family and work alongside the multi-agency service and TACS. You will work to deliver evidence-based therapeutic interventions in the collaborative, problem-solving court, FDAC. A crucial aspect of these roles will be to bring learning back into the locality teams and further enhance services to locality families and communities.

As a locality FDAC Social Worker, you'll experience:

• systemic practice that is curious, courageous, and compassionate
• trauma-informed approaches
• multi-professional collaboration and planning
• deeper understanding of Hidden Harm and its impact on children
• confidence in court settings and the expert voice of social workers
• restorative practice with high support and high challenge
• development of multi-agency interventions
• use of language that cares
• collaborative permanency planning
• equal access to FDAC for families across all localities
• you’ll be the 'spoke', holding one FDAC case from your locality
• TACS will be the 'hub', supporting you as part of the wider family team
• you’ll deliver interventions and share learning with your locality team

What it will involve:

• hold one FDAC case (approx. 2 days/week)
• reduced caseload to support this work
• attend fortnightly FDAC hearings with your family
• write and curate all FDAC reports (review, evidence, final)
• attend formulation and intervention planning meetings
• deliver interventions and support permanency planning
• work within a multidisciplinary team (including nurses, therapists, and support workers)
• receive a full induction, peer and 1:1 supervision, and contribute to transformation reviews

You will have:

• Social Work England registration
• a recognised qualification in Social Work
• to have passed your Assessed and Supported Year in Employment (ASYE)
• DBS clearance

We welcome applications from newly qualified and social workers in the early years of their career. Depending on your qualification date and previous experience, you will be invited to either join our accredited ASYE programme or to complete an alternative early-career development in-house pathway. The appropriate option will be explored and confirmed as part of the interview and offer process.