Job Description

The Service & Team:

We believe that the children of Cornwall deserve the very best. We put their needs at the heart of everything we do and we are looking for people who share our determination to improve their lives and make a brighter future. If you believe in humane, relationship-based social work with children and families we offer the opportunity to develop your social work career in an innovative and ambitious children’s service in one of the most beautiful parts of the country.

The Role:

There are full time and part time vacancies for the following within the Fostering and Kinship Service:

• Social worker - Kinship Team
• Social worker - Fostering Supervisory Team
• Social worker - Fostering Recruitment and Assessment (Fostering South West Regional Hub)

The post holder will be located within the Kinship or Fostering Service, serving the whole County. This may also include some out of County work.

The role within the Kinship Team; responsible for assessing, supervising and supporting kinship carers who are looking after children in care (connected person carers) and privately fostered children. The kinship team carry out kinship fostering and special guardianship assessments to help determine permanency for children. A kinship social worker will also be case-responsible for privately fostered children.

The role within the Fostering Service; responsible for assessing, supervising and supporting foster carers who are looking after children in care (including kinship/connected person carers). The Fostering Team carries out fostering and special guardianship assessments to help determine permanency for children. This role would suit an experienced Social Worker who has worked within Fostering, Child Protection or another front line assessment team.

All posts will require the social worker to be experienced in undertaking robust evidence-based assessments and have experience providing evidence in high pressured situations; being confident to present within the Fostering and Permanence Panel and in Court. They will be effective in multi agency working and in undertaking direct work with families; including leading groups and training when required.

This is a public/customer-facing role, where the statutory English language requirement for public sector workers applies.

This position will be subject to an enhanced criminal record disclosure check.

Working Pattern:

Full time positions will be expected to work 37 hours a week, typically Monday to Friday. Part time positions will include 18.5 hours, exact days to be discussed on successful appointment with your line manager.

Cornwall Council adopts a flexible policy which can be discussed.

What you’ll need to succeed:

You will be a social worker registered with Social Work England who will have:

• Previous experience working within a social care environment
• A proven track record of excellent practice that improves the lives of children
• High-level written and verbal communication skills to build effective professional relationships with families and other professionals
• Knowledge and understanding of the legislation, models and theories relevant to children’s social work, and the ability to evidence how you have applied your learning to your practice
• The skills to undertake assessments and to use evidence-based practice tools to devise, implement and review care plans

If your experience as a social worker is within another sector (such as Adult Social Care or the Voluntary sector), we provide additional support to transition into children and families social work through a supported induction period.

Please note: If you have qualified within the last 2 years, but not completed your Assessed and Supported Year of Employment (ASYE) we would welcome your application as a Newly Qualified Social Worker (NQSW) in order to access Cornwall’s ASYE programme which runs twice yearly. You would need to apply for our NQSW adverts.

Please read the role profile for the full details of this role attached below in this advert

What you’ll get in return:

Cornwall Council’s ambition is to be an employer of choice, a high performing Council and a learning organisation. We commit to providing a reward and benefits package to attract, motivate and reward our employees. We offer a range of flexible working options to our staff. This helps provide our employees with a greater work/life balance. Whilst still ensuring that service needs are met.

Our core employee rewards and benefits include:

• a competitive salary.
• a defined benefit pension scheme, based on your career average earnings. This includes the option for extra voluntary contributions
• a generous annual leave entitlement with the potential to purchase additional leave.
• a national award-winning employee health and wellbeing programme
• Employee benefits scheme giving employees access to a wide range of discounts to local and national goods and services

Additional Information:

Cornwall Council is unable to offer visa sponsorship or transfer existing sponsorship for this role.

The full role profiles are attached to this advert below:

Grade 3 - Social Worker

Grade 4 - Experienced Children’s Social Worker

We recommend saving a copy of this to refer to if you are invited to an interview.

For more information or an informal chat about the role please contact the following managers:

For the Kinship Team - Nicola Whatmore - 07718979195

For the Fostering Team - Liz Robbins - 07966862616

For Fostering recruitment and assessment - Helen Richards - 07483106219

Application Process

Please attach a supporting statement to your application, you can add your Education & Qualifications details manually using the application form timeline or you can upload your CV.

Remember to demonstrate why you are suitable against each of the points marked as ‘Application’ on the Role Profile using examples from your experience or transferable skills. This might be through qualifications or descriptive examples from your work / personal experience, which clearly illustrates what you did and the effect it had.

Guidance on how to complete your application can be found here – The application process.

We recognise that you may choose to use AI tools when preparing your application. We ask that any information you include is an accurate reflection of your own skills, knowledge, experience and achievements. You may be asked to discuss the examples and evidence you provide during the selection process.

We may adapt our shortlisting approach where we receive a high volume of applications. Any shortlisting decisions will be based on the information provided in your application and the essential requirements of the role.

Please note that applications cannot be edited after they have been submitted, please contact careers@cornwall.gov.uk if you have any queries or require assistance with your application.

Existing employees must apply using their Cornwall Council email address through the Opportunity Marketplace on Oracle.

We are happy to talk about flexible working options such as part-time or compressed hours. More examples of our flexible working opportunities can be found here - flexible working options.

Fairness and inclusion are at the heart of our vision for Cornwall. In order to best serve our communities, we are striving to achieve a diverse workforce that is inclusive of all backgrounds, cultures and identities; e.g., race, disability, sex, gender reassignment status, age, religion and sexual orientation. We are an equal opportunities and Disability Confident employer, and we will assess applicants on their merits.

Cornwall Council is committed to safeguarding and following safer recruitment principles to help make sure our staff and volunteers are suitable to work with children, young people and adults at risk. It’s a vital part of creating a safe and positive environment and making a commitment to keeping all service users safe from harm.