Senior Practitioner in Stockport

Locality Senior Social Work Practitioner SO3 (£42,488- £48,062 inclusive of 10% market supplement), plus essential car user allowance and reimbursement of Social Work England registration fees. 37 Hours, Full Time Permanent Hybrid Stockport Civic Complex and Home Working.

Application Deadline: 1 July 2025, 11:59pm. Please be aware that we may close this vacancy early if a high volume of applications are received. We encourage you to submit your application as soon as possible to avoid disappointment.

Shortlisting date: 3 July 2025. Interview Dates: 9 July 2025. Interview Type: Face to face.

Your role: We’d love you to come and join our Stockport Family! Here in Stockport, we’re looking for driven, dedicated, and caring children’s social workers to help support some of our most important people, our children and their families. We have a unique way of working which is centred all around relationships; our social workers assess and deliver interventions from the point of a family needing support until that family no longer requires a statutory service from us, meaning for our families there are no transition points. They’ve told us that this is really important to them.

As a Senior Practitioner in Stockport Family, you will get to meet families, build relationships with them, and retain these relationships across all levels of intervention, meaning you’ll see the outcomes of the hard work you’ve put in. This will also provide you with a breadth of different skills and experiences, which will go some way in enhancing your social work knowledge.

Our Senior Practitioners are key people in our management structure. We ask our Senior Practitioners to be real sources of support to our Team Leaders; you will be crucial to performance management, the development of student and ASYE social workers and hold a reduced but more complex caseload, in order to support you to develop professionally, but also to give you the time and space you need to really develop your team.

In Stockport, career development is key. Our Team Leader cohort grew their careers from being social workers in Stockport; we are committed to growing our Senior Practitioners and supporting you with your long-term career goals. We have a system of mentoring and buddying to support you to develop your career in whatever direction interests you and our yearly PDRs have really positive feedback from our social workers in terms of how they support with career development.

You will be a part of a friendly and welcoming team, with each team having two experienced senior practitioners and a skilled, nurturing team leader.

About You: In Stockport, we are driven by our values so we want social workers who are motivated by building relationships with children and families and to take an empowering approach to working with families. We would ideally like our Senior Practitioners to have experience of working across both duty and locality systems and to have held both private and public court proceedings, as well as experience of the pre-proceedings process.

To help us meet the needs of our children and families and to help them when they need it most, we need social workers just like you, people who are hard-working, passionate about making a difference, and wanting children to reach their full potential. You’ll also be a team player, so you’re able to share your own knowledge with others and continue to learn.

We know however, that this is a tough job and it’s a big ask. So to do it well, you need to be fully supported every step of the way. This is why we have an excellent package of benefits, including additional tailored support if you need it, all of which are detailed below.

Learning and development is a key part of our culture, at every stage. We know you’ll come with a host of skills and things to share, but we know you need to continue to learn so you can thrive. So we will support you to flourish and develop in your career.

About Us: In Stockport, our vision is for all children to have the best start in life. We co-designed an outcomes framework that we are committed to as our vision for supporting children and families in Stockport.

• I feel safe
• I feel part of my local community
• I enjoy good health and wellbeing
• I am confident and able to reach my goals
• I am happy and have people I can trust
• The people that love and care for me are enabled to do this
• My voice is heard and acted upon

We have a model of restorative practice which means relationships are central to everything we do, not just with our families but with our colleagues too. We care about our use of language too, and we are very ambitious for the families we work with.

We believe that change is possible through the building of strong relationships where there is both high support, and where necessary, high challenge. All colleagues are offered training to help us develop this restorative approach.

To support our social workers with this, we have teams with experienced leaders, and a dedicated social work workforce development team, providing reflective and clinical supervision and we also offer innovative support services for families, which have been praised by the DFE including New Beginnings and Comma.

Our commitment to our staff: Direct access to a team leader and two senior practitioners on each team, overseeing six social workers. We have a strong workforce development programme; we provide an introduction to restorative practice to set the foundation, and a host of other training including working with SEND needs.

For our ASYE’s we have a supportive programme, with a year-long series of practice development sessions. We encourage continual CPD and allow for protected time for you to do this. All our social workers are offered a yearly professional development review (PDR) to see what’s next in your career.

We provide a solid induction into social work for our social workers, with a gradual increase in caseload and complexity of work. We offer high quality reflective supervision on a monthly basis from your line manager; all of our team leaders are trained in reflective and systemic supervision. There are opportunities for group and reflective supervision delivered by senior practitioners too. ASYE’s will have a reflective mentor to offer additional space to think and learn outside of your team.

As our services are integrated, so there’s a wealth of expert advice all around you. We provide opportunities to seek specialist advice and consultation from various services such as our IROs, Aspire service for domestic abuse and complex safeguarding, and our disability and short breaks team.

We offer a full corporate induction too where you can meet other professionals across the council - our senior leadership also maintain a relationship with our new starters, to ensure that they are settling in well.

What can we offer you? Modern and pleasant offices newly refurbished end of 2022, with the latest technology so you can work hybrid, and located in the town centre. Reimbursement of your Social Work England regulator fees. Full subscription to Research in Practice to access the latest research publications. Discounted multi-storey parking on-site. Essential Car User Allowance from £846 per annum in addition to your salary. Annual ‘Ambitious Stockport’ Awards to recognise colleagues who live our values every day in their professional lives. For more experienced social workers, the opportunity to be a Practice Educator and mentor a student, which you receive a payment for.

Why Stockport? As a local authority, Stockport offers a supportive and vibrant working environment; our teams are dedicated to delivering the very best outcomes for our children and families and we work together with our multi-agency partners in a positive and upbeat way.

At Stockport Council we are one ambitious team on a mission to create opportunities for everyone who lives, works and spends time in the borough. Working at Stockport Council means contributing to one of the most thriving towns in the North. We’re keen to recruit people with the right values and behaviours that can help us ensure our workplace values are at the heart of everything we do.

We are proud to be recognised under the Good Employment Charter as an organisation committed to the wellbeing of our colleagues. As members of the charter, we have been recognised as a great place to work for all colleagues and pledge to pay the real living wage, engage staff in key decisions and endorse fair and flexible working conditions.

If you would like to find out more about the role please contact Sophie Shaw at Sophie.shaw@stockport.gov.uk for an informal discussion about the role. The successful applicant’s appointment will be subject to satisfactory pre-employment clearances including a Disclosure and Barring Service check. Stockport Council holds a Visa sponsorship licence but this can only be used for certain roles and this campaign does not currently qualify.

Please note that we have made a commitment to improve the employment opportunities for people with disabilities, care leavers and ex-military personnel. As part of the Guaranteed Assessment Scheme you will therefore be guaranteed an interview if you meet both the criteria for the scheme and the essential job role criteria.

Stockport Council is committed to promoting a diverse and inclusive workforce culture - a place where we can all be ourselves and succeed. We welcome applicants from all backgrounds and communities to join our workforce. We want our employees to have a good work-life balance and in many job roles we can offer a range of flexible/hybrid working arrangements. We also have inclusive employment policies and staff engagement forums to support our diverse workforce. We will listen to, learn from, and develop our workforce.