Social Worker – Adolescent / Contextual Safeguarding Team

Are you a passionate and dedicated social worker with the skills to engage and make a difference to the lives of young people and help them to see a positive future? Wandsworth Children’s Services Adolescent Team is a small but specialist social work team. As part of our evolving and ambitious team, you will adopt a trauma-informed and relational framework to address extra-familial harm through the lens of child protection. You will work intensively with young people and their families to mitigate risk of harm outside of the family home including Child Sexual Exploitation, Criminal Exploitation, Serious Youth Violence, Gangs, Missing and online/social media abuse. Can you help these young people by applying your creative approach, working with them in a flexible and dynamic way?

About the Role

In this specialist role, you will undertake the breadth of statutory social work interventions from initial assessments to CIN/CP and CLA work. You will have a lower than usual caseload of around 8-11 young people with whom you will work intensively and creatively using a contextual safeguarding approach. Working collaboratively with the young person, family and friends, and professional network, you will develop targeted intervention plans with the aim of mitigating risks of extra familial harm, promoting safety in different contexts, and supporting our young people to achieve their full potential free from harm. You will have a relationship-based and trauma informed approach to your interventions and will be required to offer reliable, consistent, and persistent efforts to engage young people; to understand and assess their experiences in the community; and to work collaboratively with multi-agency partners to plan, implement and review interventions intended to create safety in different contexts.

This is a specialist area of practice, and it is important that all practitioners, supervisors, and senior leaders are diligent in ensuring that young people are kept safe, are treated fairly, with dignity and respect, and that anti‑racist and anti‑discriminatory practice is at the heart of our work.

Essential Qualifications, Skills and Experience

• Qualified Social Worker registered with Social Work England with relevant statutory practice experience of working with children, young people and their families.
• Understanding of Trauma Informed, Systematic Practice, and the key issues for young people at risk of extra-familial harm including Child Sexual Exploitation, Criminal Exploitation, Serious Youth Violence, Gangs, Missing and online/social media abuse.
• Skilled in building trusting relationships and great communication skills in different contexts.
• Experience of multi-agency working, working collaboratively, creatively, and flexibly to obtain young people’s wishes and feelings and ensure these are central to decision making and intervention plans.
• Knowledge and experience of applying anti-discriminatory, anti-oppressive, and anti-racist practice.
• Experience and confidence in undertaking high quality assessments and reports, managing risk, and continually reviewing impact of interventions.

Richmond and Wandsworth Better Service Partnership is committed to making our recruitment practices as inclusive as possible for everyone. We are committed to promoting equality and diversity and developing a culture that values differences, recognising that employees from a variety of backgrounds bring important and positive contributions to the Councils and can improve the way we deliver services. We are proud to be a Disability Confident employer. If you require any reasonable adjustments throughout the recruitment and selection process, please let us know. We are also committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people/vulnerable adults and expect all staff and volunteers to share this commitment. Some posts may be exempted under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 and as such appointment to these posts will be conditional upon the receipt of a satisfactory response to a check of police records via Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS).

We offer a wide range of benefits designed to attract, develop, and reward our employees such as 40 days annual leave (including Bank Holidays), flexible working and a generous pension plan.