Senior Social Worker

Are you an experienced Social Worker seeking promotion?

Are you looking to develop into leadership & take your social care skills in the field of Adult Mental Health further?

Do you want to be part of an energetic & dynamic team in the heart of the South West Hertfordshire community, working for an award-winning, outstanding Trust?

We are looking for a Band 7 Senior Social Worker to join the Adult Community Mental Health Service in Watford/Three Rivers, Hertfordshire.

You must hold a full valid driving license and have access to a car to use regularly for business purposes is essential (unless you have a disability as defined by the Equality Act 2010).

Job description

Job Summary:Senior Social Workers are a key part of the senior management team and the focus of the role is to promote, lead and act in accordance with the principles of personalisation, ensuring the team are working to promote wellbeing, and enabling individuals rights to choice and control. In doing so they will carry out complex assessments of need, plan and deliver services and review outcomes with the individual, their personal support networks and support providers.

Senior Social Workers will lead the Team's social care agenda and will supervise the social care staff within the Team. As a Senior Social Worker you will act as a champion and leader of social care within a locality/quadrant to ensure a focus on outcome based interventions. You will be expected to give robust, consistent expert social care practice advice, including safeguarding, in partnership with other specialist senior social care colleagues. You will reinforce the need to deliver high quality, cost effective social care services to service users and their carers focused on the principles of choice, control and independence, as well as ensuring their safety. You will have a small caseload of the most complex cases and you will manage the provision of assessments and reviews of social care intervention.

Partnership working is a key component of this post both within and outside the Trust and you will need to be innovative in ensuring that there is a range of appropriate services locally to support individual recovery journeys. You will work with community partners to address complex social issues and will be encouraged to think innovatively about how to address local concerns with our community partners.

You will be expected to work in partnership with service users and carers so that they can be empowered, and services can be improved as a result of feedback of their experiences.

All Senior Social Workers must be registered with Social Work England.

For a more detailed description, please see attached Job Description and Personal Specification.

Person specification

KNOWLEDGE & EXPERIENCE

Essential

• An appropriate professional social work qualification
• Registration with General Social Care Council
• Education to degree level
• Masters Degree or equivalent training
• Approved Mental Health Professional training and qualification (or prepared to undertake training within a year of appointment)
• Relevant post-qualifying training for social workers

Desirable

• Other post-qualifying training e.g. CBT, family therapy
• Best Interests Assessment training

AREAS OF EXPERIENCE

Essential

• Stong post qualification experience with demonstrable evidence of excellent practice at a high level
• Extensive knowledge of legislation, statutory guidance, theory and policy in relation to relevant adult and children's social care.
• Experience of undertaking assessments,focused as personalisation, choice and control, and care planning Understanding and experience of personal budgets and direct payments

Experience of supervising and mentoring staff

Experience of multidisciplinary working and evidence of collaborative work

Experience of partnership working with service users and carers, demonstrating dignity and respect particularly in very challenging situations

Experience of work as Approved Mental Health Professional.

Desirable

• Experience of work as a Best Interests assessor

COMMUNICATION SKILLS

Essential

• Excellent ability to communicate with a wide range of stakeholders including service users and carers, other professional colleagues, members of other organisations and local communities, verbally and in writing.
• Evidence of successful management of difficult meetings.
• Ability to manage highly sensitive information
• Experience of using electronic recording systems and ability to produce accurate, appropriate and timely reports

ANALYTICAL SKILLS

Essential

• Ability to analyse service user and carer information.
• Experience of undertaking small scale audits and surveys.

Desirable

• Understanding of basic research methods

DIVERSITY

Essential

• Demonstrable ability to working sensitively with diverse needs and environments
• Commitment to anti-discriminatory practice

PHYSICAL SKILLS

Essential

• Ability to visit and attend meetings at a variety of locations and environments Experience of using computer - PC
• literate to ECDL standard

Able to travel between bases and offices, as required, using suitable mode of transport.

PHYSICAL EFFORT

Essential

• Ability to meet timescales and respond to crises and appropriate

MENTAL EFFORT

Essential

• Flexibility and ability to respond to a variety of tasks, and to prioritise own workload
• Ability to manage others and convey information which may be contentious sensitively so that it achieves required improvements and outcomes

EMOTIONAL EFFORT

Essential

• Ability to deal with distressing and sometimes aggressive behaviour of service users, carers and colleagues

GENERAL

Essential

• Experience of working in an integrated health and social care environment

About the employer

Hertfordshire Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust (HPFT) is an outstanding organisation with ambitions to match. We are one of just five mental health trusts to achieve an overall rating of 'Outstanding' from the Care Quality Commission, and our aim is to be the leading provider of mental health and specialist learning disability services in the country.

Our family of over 4000 members of staff provide health and social care for over 400,000 people with mental ill health, physical ill health and learning disabilities across Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, and Norfolk, delivering these services within the community and several inpatient settings. We also deliver a range of nationally commissioned specialist services including Tier 4 services for children and young people, perinatal services, plus medium and low secure learning disabilities services.

The care we provide makes a fantastic difference to the lives of our service users, their families and carers - everything is underpinned by choice, independence and equality, with our Trust values embedded throughout:

Our Trust values are:

Welcoming. Kind. Positive. Respectful. Professional.