Social Worker – Link Family Worker, North Essex

We are recruiting for an experienced Social Worker (Link Family Worker) to join our high-performing Family Solutions team in Tendring. This is a fantastic opportunity to work within a service described by Ofsted as "exceptional", delivering early help to families facing multiple and complex challenges.

Family Solutions

Family Solutions is part of Essex’s Children & Families service, providing intensive early help to families experiencing a range of complex and interconnected challenges. The service works holistically with families, focusing on building resilience, strengthening relationships, and enabling sustainable, long-term change. You’ll be joining a skilled, multi-disciplinary team that includes professionals from a range of backgrounds, all working collaboratively to achieve the best possible outcomes for children and families. The team has strong links with statutory children’s services and partner agencies, ensuring a joined-up approach to safeguarding and support.

At Family Solutions, there is a strong emphasis on professional development, reflective practice, and innovation, with regular supervision and opportunities to contribute to service development – including ongoing integration with Children’s Social Care as part of the Family First Partnership Programme.

The Opportunity

As a Social Worker (Link Family Worker), you’ll play a key role in supporting both families and colleagues, bringing social work expertise into a dynamic early help environment. Your responsibilities will include:

• Managing a caseload, including assessing safeguarding risks and supporting threshold decisions alongside managers and practice supervisors.
• Acting as a source of professional advice within the team, including joint working on complex cases (e.g. where there are concerns around neglect).
• Building strong, trusting relationships with families to enable meaningful and sustained change.
• Working collaboratively with statutory children’s services and partner agencies to ensure coordinated support.
• Facilitating family meetings, coordinating services, and providing both emotional and practical support in homes and community settings.

Accountabilities

• Responsible for supporting manager and practice supervisor to undertake screenings of new contacts, understanding threshold.
• Responsible for determining the direction and actions required in order to progress cases forward on a day-to-day basis; recognising when key decisions regarding risks/concerns need to be referred to the Team Manager or Practice Supervisor.
• Responsible for acting as a source of advice, guidance and support to colleagues in relation to complex cases which would benefit from social work expertise, mentoring and guiding alternatively qualified colleagues in best practice.
• Responsible for undertaking holistic assessments of family needs to help create intervention plans and identify how outcomes can be achieved that fully reflect the family and young person’s views and aspirations, delivering interventions, including group work programs, to support families to make change.
• Responsible for facilitating complex family meetings, managing the potentially competing views of families and professionals, in order to find achievable solutions.
• Responsible for undertaking individual and group programmes of work to enable children and families to develop their skills to resolve issues and problems themselves; providing information and accompanying families to help access other local services.
• Responsible for providing specific practical, personal and emotional support to families in their homes or other settings as part of an agreed plan in order to achieve agreed and sustainable family outcomes.
• Responsible for actively participating in regular supervision in order to review work and ensure effective interventions for families.
• Responsible for ensuring that the principles of effective practice are fully embedded in service delivery; working collaboratively with staff and partners to ensure effective risk management in line with the thresholds of the Effective Support and Guidance document to ensure that the Family Solutions team understands and follows the SET child protection procedures.

The Experience You Will Bring

• Qualified Social Worker, registered with Social Work England, and post-ASYE.
• Recent experience in frontline children’s services, experience of completing assessment and managing CIN and or CP Cases.
• Hold or willing to work towards Practice Educator Qualification.
• A strong commitment to uphold the standards and values of the social work profession.
• Evidence of continuing professional development with good knowledge in relevant professional area and commitment to the principles of evidence-based practice.
• Significant practical experience of working with families with multiple and complex needs.
• Effective communication skills, good problem solving and assessment skills with a demonstrable track record of building and sustaining positive professional relationships with individuals and families with multiple and complex needs.
• Experience of applying a solution focused approach and providing practical advice and support to families to enable them to achieve positive and sustainable outcomes.
• Ability to work in partnership with others to maximise outcomes for families in line with the Family Solutions operating principles.
• Ability to work independently and as part of a team and to use supervision appropriately.

The role requires you to be mobile throughout a wider operational area including travelling around the county of Essex and beyond, transporting service users and their belongings and to be able to do so in an emergency. Driving licence and car or the ability to meet the mobility requirements of the role through other means is essential.

Why Essex?

As one of the largest and most dynamic UK local authorities, Essex offers a stimulating public service environment. Covering over 1,420 square miles and serving 1.8 million residents, we’re committed to transformational change and delivering better quality at lower cost. Recognised in the top three of the latest IMPOWER index for productivity, we ensure everyone matters in Everyone’s Essex. With flexible working options and a focus on innovation, whether you are looking to develop your career or contribute to the local community, Essex is the ideal place for you.

Essex County Council is proud to be a Disability Confident Leader. We’re committed to interview all disabled applicants who choose to apply under our Job Interview Scheme if they meet the minimum requirements of the job. Please speak to our Recruiters if you require any reasonable adjustments during the process. We’re also committed to interview all veterans and care leavers, who meet the minimum requirements of the role for which they are applying.

Benefits

Once you’ve secured your role within Essex County Council you will receive many great employee benefits, including support for unpaid carers and flexible working arrangements to accommodate their needs. At Essex County Council, we value integrity and ethical behaviour. We kindly ask that you embrace our code of conduct and the Nolan principles, including throughout the recruitment process. Your commitment to these standards helps us maintain a positive and respectful workplace for everyone.

As part of employment with Essex County Council (ECC) should your role require a DBS check you will be required to register with the DBS update service. The DBS update service ensures all registered DBS certificates are kept up to date and allows authorised parties to view the status of your certificate. This is an annual subscription, and you will be responsible for ensuring this is maintained.

Essex County Council is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and vulnerable adults, and expects all employees and volunteers to share this commitment.