Advanced Practitioner - Quality and Improvement

Full time - permanent

Grade 8 - £44,863 - £48847 per annum

Are you an experienced social worker or a social work manager, passionate about quality and improvement in Children’s and Adult’s Social Care and ready for a new challenge? If so, we want to hear from you!

Here at the City of Wolverhampton Council, we are committed to excellent social work, embedding a Think Family approach and working restoratively with children, young people, adults with care and support needs and their families. Our vision in Adult’s and Children’s Services is that the individuals we support are at the centre of everything we do.

We need people like you who will support us on our improvement journey from a “good” rated authority to an “outstanding” one.

We are looking for an experienced social worker or a social work manager to work in the Principal Social Worker’s team supporting both Adult's and Children’s Services with quality assurance activity and improving social work practice. This will include leading on audit activity, analysing findings, leading and reviewing improvement plans and presenting reports. 

You will also have responsibility for projects and key pieces of work to meet given organisational objectives and standards, which includes sector-led improvement activity. For instance you will lead on the production of the annual adult social care report called the Local Account as well as our social work and workforce "Health Check" surveys, Self-Assessment reports and other work needed as part of Peer Challenges / Inspection activity.

You will play a crucial part in staff development, creating and delivering training and contributing to a culture of continuous learning.

Adults and Children’s Services have been on a journey of transformation over recent years and have successfully embedded strengths-based approaches (Restorative Practice and Three Conversations©) which you will champion and support to further embed. You will also have the opportunity to work with regional colleagues, including Universities, and contribute to the work of the West Midlands Social Work Teaching Partnership to drive up excellence in social work education and professional practice.

You will be an experienced social worker, or a social work manager, currently registered with Social Work England. It's also important that you have some supervisory experience and a sound knowledge of Adult’s and Children’s legislation as well as key social work models and theories.

You will be confident working with data, identifying trends and collaborating with others to form solutions, able to take responsibility for action plans and driving continual improvement.

You will be highly organised, able to plan and prioritise tasks with varying timescales and managing competing priorities, with a proven track record of meeting deadlines. 

You will have excellent written skills, be confident in using your own initiative and able to offer effective challenge and feedback. You will be able to show your commitment to engaging and collaborating with children, young people, adults, families and professionals to support co-production and inclusion in the development of services and policies.

You will be a confident public speaker, comfortable working alone as well as part of a team, and able to work at pace.

One of the key parts of the role is about continual improvement and will require you to be solution focused and innovative.

Experience of managing projects would be desirable.

Why join us? We offer:

• A generous annual leave entitlement of 25 days, including 8 bank holidays which increase with length of service. There is also an added option to buy up to 10 days additional leave (please note there are 3 mandatory unpaid leave days per year)
• Supportive and flexible working arrangements
• Excellent local government pension scheme
• Access to “Our Rewards” portal, which provides employees with access to hundreds of discounts and offers from top brands
• Fantastic Learning & Development offer including access to Research in Practice and a number of local social work briefings and conferences
• A Social Work Career and CPD Pathway which will support you to progress and develop
• Regular, reflective formal and informal supervision
• Strong commitment throughout the organisation to eliminating discrimination and encouraging diversity – this includes four staff equality forums (Race Religion and Belief; Disability and Age; Gender Maternity and Paternity and LGBT+) and access to an external and independent confidential reporting service for employee concerns to be raised (“Safe Place”)
• Commitment to supporting employee wellbeing and ensuring a good work /life balance, including a strong employee assistance scheme and wellbeing offer

It’s about people like you making a real difference…

To find out more about us why not take a look at our website: http://www.wolvessocialworkjobs.com/

If you need more information or have any questions, please contact Jennifer Rogers, Principal Social Worker, by email: jennifer.rogers@wolverhampton.gov.uk

As part of the interview process, candidates will be required to undertake:

o A written exercise

o A panel interview

Written exercises will be held week commencing 13th September 2021

Formal panel interviews will take place week commencing 27th September and 4th October 2021

As you will be aware, due to COVID-19 we may be unable to meet with you in person, in which case arrangements will be made to undertake the recruitment process virtually. Further details will be sent out to shortlisted candidates after the closing date has passed.

Please note a separate advert will be placed for Newly Qualified Social Workers as and when vacancies occur.

The City of Wolverhampton Council are committed to representing Wolverhampton’s diverse community and therefore strongly encourage applications from all applicants meeting the essential criteria. The Council operates a guaranteed interview policy for disabled candidates, those who have previously been under our care and are over the age of 25 and veterans who have served in the military, where it is evidenced that the essential criteria of the post are met.

Our application system is anonymous, this means recruitment interview panel members will not receive details of your name or date of birth unless you are invited to attend an interview. We are not able to hide personal information from any attachments that you upload so we request that you remove your name, date of birth and any personal information from any supporting documentation. The shortlisting panel will receive your candidate pack in full (including any attachments) showing your candidate number. If you are invited to attend an interview, panel members will be provided with your name.

Supporting documents
Job description and Person Spec Quality and Improvement Advanced Practitioner June 2021.docx