About Us

Rugby Children's Safeguarding and Support Team are looking to recruit a Team Leader.

Here at Warwickshire County Council we put children and families at the heart of everything we do, we work with families restoratively, building strong relationships and connections to help families find long lasting solutions. We aim to ensure that Warwickshire’s children, young people, parents and carers receive the right help at the right time. We are passionate about supporting communities and families to build on their strengths.

Our work with children and families contributes to our wider council aim – to make Warwickshire the best it can be for everyone and to create a Child Friendly Warwickshire. It’s a big responsibility that can be challenging at times, but this is what drives our staff to succeed, develop and achieve.

Throughout 2020 we continued to look to the future and build on our programme of change and £21m investment in the service.... Covid hasn’t stopped us!   

It has helped us shape and develop a focus on wellbeing and ensuring our technology, supportive leadership and supervision offer is the backbone to our offer to our workforce.   WCC invested in Microsoft technology in 2020 including the use of Surface Pros and MS365 suite which has enabled our workforce to seamlessly transition to community and homeworking and is fully supported by a team of ICT specialist. 

We have a whole council commitment to flexible working and employee wellbeing.  We nurture, support and challenge each other to achieve the best outcomes for all our children.    

We are engaged in a substantial £21m change and investment programme with funding from both the Council and Department for Education to strengthen relationship and evidenced based practice.   This includes the introduction of the Leeds Family Values model (increase Family Group Conferences, more support for Special Guardians and a Caring Dads Programme).  We also have a new Children’s Workforce Academy.  All underpinned by restorative and trauma informed practice.    

WCC is an authority that engages with innovation – we are trialling ‘kit bags’ for the What Works Centre and we have commissioned an equalities review of our services from EQUIP as part of our response to challenges raised by Black Lives Matter.  Post pandemic we will maintain lessons learnt and use this as an opportunity to reconnect and refocus on partnership and practice.  

The Role

We want our practitioners to spend their time building relationships with families to achieve change.  We provide safe and manageable caseloads and have provided substantial additional capacity to support teams with Covid pressures.  We have excellent business support who minute all child in need, child protection and children in care multi agency meetings for social workers. We are also investing in technology such as automation to support practitioners to automatically upload documents to children’s electronic records.  

We are doing great work and we need great people to join us to continue to improve the lives of local children and their families If you’re someone who is prepared to get stuck in, who like us, wants to do the best job possible, who approaches everything with passion, tenacity, courage and purpose, then we want you to work with us.  

Are you an experienced and passionate social worker, looking for career progression? Do you value family and are you willing to go the extra mile to make a real difference? If so, you could be the person we are looking for to join our innovative and supportive team.

The Safeguarding and Support Team support a wide range of families including, Children in Need who are on the Edge of Care or Child Protection, children who are currently subject to Child Protection Plans, families who we are working with within the court arena, those who are both in care and have a plan of permanency outside of their parents care or with a plan of reunification home.

We work with families under the principles of Restorative Practice to identify plans which meet each individual family's needs and is used with every family, to help them identify positive change in order to develop a plan that works for them. 

Team Managers support a team of social workers and a social care worker to ensure that they can be the best they can be, providing high quality supervision and support to achieve positive outcomes for the children and families with whom they work.

For further information please see the Job Description and Person Specification.

Additional Information

This organisation is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people and adults and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment.

These posts are subject to an enhanced DBS disclosure.

For further information about the role please contact Sharron Sandeman sharronsandeman@warwickshire.gov.uk  

Closing Date: 28th June 2021

To apply for this vacancy please click on the 'Apply' button.
 
Our method of application is online, please note, CV’s should not been submitted unless asked to do so.

 
If you are unable to apply using the 'Apply' button please contact the Recruitment Centre on hrandpayroll@warwickshire.gov.uk including your contact details and any relevant screenshots.
 
You will be notified of our shortlisting decision via email, so please check your email on a regular basis after submitting your application.

As part of being a Disability Confident employer we guarantee to interview anyone with a disability whose application meets the minimum criteria for the post. By ‘minimum criteria’ we mean that you must provide us with evidence in your application form which demonstrates that you generally meet the level of competence required for each competence, as well as meeting any of the qualifications, skills or experience defined as essential in the person specification.

Should you require application forms in an alternative format / language or any adjustments to be made throughout the application process or upon appointment, please contact hrandpayroll@warwickshire.gov.uk  and we will make every effort to meet your specific requirements.

Warwickshire County Council is committed to equality of opportunity for all staff and is keen to address areas of under representation in its workforce and would particularly welcome applications from all suitably qualified persons from the BAME community, disabled people and people from the LGBT+ Community.