Senior Social Worker

We have a vacancy for an Senior Social Worker to join the Adult Community Mental Health Service (ACMHS) in North West Hertfordshire.

Are you interested in working with an outstanding Trust to develop and deliver community treatment in mental health?

We welcome diversity in our workforce and encourage applicants from people of all ages and backgrounds, such as those with lived experience of mental health difficulties.

This role covers the St. Albans community mental health team.

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

For a more extensive Job Description please read documents attached

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 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.

ct as the lead manager in safeguarding concerns / enquiries including assessment and management of risk, knowing how to intervene proportionately and ensuring people are protected from harm, while protecting their human rights.

Act as the lead professional when an adult is at risk of social exclusion and assist people to deal with adverse circumstance such as poor health, poverty, inadequate living conditions; as well as maximising the strength of individuals, their families and their communities.

Act as the lead professional where a person is severely constrained by social or family circumstance and provides support to achieve a reasonable degree to independence and autonomy.

Act as the lead professional when a persons health or capacity is deteriorating or likely to deteriorate (without intervention) and the alternative may be premature admission to institutional forms of care or a legal intervention by the state.

Person specification

Qualifications and Knowledge

Essential

• Registered mental health professional appropriate to the job role (nursing, OT, SW)

Evidence of continuous professional development

Desirable

• Completion of mentorship /preceptorship Course/ENB equivalent, or intention to complete
• Approved Mental Health Practitioner
• Practice Educator Qualification
• Best Interest Assessor practitioner

Relevant Experience

Essential

• Works with vulnerable adults and or children within a health and social care setting
• Involvement in multi-agency work
• Experience of student supervision
• Applied use of Social Care & Health Care legislation
• Safeguarding processes and investigations

Desirable

• Applied use of at least one of the following of Mental capacity Act; Mental Health Act; care Management; Continuing Health Care, Care Programme Approach
• Experience of Staff supervision & development planning

Skills and Abilities

Essential

• Exceptional communication & interpersonal skills with individuals, families, groups, staff
• Strong IT skills; reporting, recording, written
• Ability to assess and record eligible and non-eligible needs, drawing on evidence based practice to inform your response
• Acts in a self-directed, proactive way to identify / develop opportunities ideas & innovation
• Keeps calm and focussed under pressurised and challenging circumstances

Desirable

• Mentors, coaches, supports and supervises other social work staff to be accountable, proactive, innovative, autonomous and to enhance performance
• Analytically interprets research, audits, case law and present to colleagues in an accessible way to inform practice
• Actively and creatively develops team members' capabilities in line with service objectives and professional standards

Knowledge/Applied understanding

Essential

• Adult Social care and legislation, strategies and guidance relevant to the post
• Safeguarding statutory responsibilities, including Making Safeguarding Personal
• Risk management and positive risk taking

Human rights legislation and how these laws protect the rights of adults

Working as part of a multi-disciplinary /multi-agency team

The personalisation agenda and applying creative problem solving to maximise independence

Desirable

• Working within a scheme of delegated authority

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.