Social Worker Aspiring Futures - Ref: CH04526 in Walsall

An exciting opportunity has arisen for the appointment of a social worker specialising in working with children and young people who are exploited to join our Aspiring Futures Team on a 12-month fixed term basis.

Walsall Children’s Social Care have created a service for exploited young people, based on feedback from exploited young people, families and professionals. The Aspiring Futures team consists of a Team Manager, Assistant Team Manager, Social Workers, Aspiring Futures Practitioners and Exploitation Coordinators. No matter where a young person is within their social care journey, they will have one Aspiring Futures Practitioner or Street Team’s practitioner who will work in a relational, trauma-informed way to seek to reduce the exploitation risks, alongside a social worker within Aspiring Futures or locality family help teams.

The model is based on rationale practice and ensuring consistency of practitioners, enabling a rapport to be built which brings the ability to gather greater, more rich and vital information that contributes to keeping that young person safe and supports mapping of all exploitation risks across Walsall. We actively attend and advocate for our young people in all statutory meetings and contribute to wider planning, having an in-depth understanding of our young people, the push and pull factors, behaviours and who they are as individuals.

We work closely with partner agencies, including but not limited to: Police, Street Teams, the Youth Justice Service, Education, Health, the Violence Reduction Partnership, Mentoring Services, Detached Youth Work Services, and Voluntary Organisations. We undertake MACE (Multi-Agency Child Exploitation) Meetings on a monthly basis for all our high-risk young people. Daily Exploitation Triage oversees all age exploitation and missing episodes and is attended by partner agencies.

As a social worker within the Aspiring Futures team, you would be working with a reduced number of young people who are being exploited, in order to enable you to work more intensively with the young person and their family, working alongside them to understand their needs and lived experiences of the young person in relation to exploitation and contextual safeguarding.

Social workers within Aspiring Futures work with young people from the start of their journey with social care, and work with young people considered at medium or high risk of exploitation identified through our daily exploitation triage. The Our Family assessments and Exploitation Risk Reduction assessments completed by the social workers and Aspiring Futures practitioners within the team support in identifying and analysing the extra-familial and contextual risks the young person is experiencing alongside the familial risks and protective factors.

Participation and partnership working with the young person and their families is key within the work of the Aspiring Futures team, ensuring time is taken to build a positive and engaging relationship with the young person and their family and fully involve them in their safety planning and decision making. Young people and their families are supported to actively participate in their MACE meetings and Team Around the Family meetings alongside key partners, to support risk reduction, disruption of the exploitation and to achieve their aspirations and positive outcomes.

As a social worker within Aspiring Futures, you will engage in group supervision with other involved practitioners around the family, in addition to individual monthly supervision. You will also be offered clinical supervision through a trained clinical psychologist.

About you

You will be Social Work Qualified with a minimum of 12 months post qualifying experience working within children’s services. You will be registered with Social Work England. You will be enthusiastic, passionate and knowledgeable about reducing exploitation for young people. You will be professional, dynamic and lead with care and compassion. You will understand risk management, context weighting and push and pull factors which contribute to our children becoming exploited.

You will have excellent communication skills both verbal and written, with young people and their families, colleagues and the wider professional network. You will have excellent assessment, report writing and analytical skills and demonstrate professional curiosity. Above all you will be driven to make positive changes for our exploited young people in Walsall and invested in the development of the staff and service.

Why work for us:

Our staff are our biggest resources, and we want to invest in them! We have a great range of benefits available to us as Council employees. These benefits include discounts for holidays, groceries, clothes, electrics and gym membership; financial benefits, expenses, flexible leave and professional development. Our model of work is hybrid, you will work 2-3 days office based (or as required) and the ability to work from home. We also offer a 9 day per fortnight pattern of working.

If you are passionate about supporting young people who are experiencing exploitation and their families and want to work as part of an innovative team in an OFSTED-rated ‘Outstanding’ local authority, committed to ongoing learning where you will receive good supervision and training, please get in touch for an informal discussion.

Walsall Council takes seriously the responsibility to safeguard and promote the welfare of all the children, young people and vulnerable adults entrusted to our care and it is our expectation that all staff will share this commitment.