Practitioner - Children's Social Work Academy

You want to combine your case-holding experience with your skills for coaching, modelling and training - with the chance to develop the next generation of Social Workers who, with your guidance, could make the progression to Senior, Team Manager, and then Director level.

You want to keep a manageable, reduced caseload so you can provide the right level of support to your cohort of newly qualified social workers, helping prepare them for visits by passing-on your own practise expertise and wisdom.

You want the opportunity to research the best-practice model and high-performance cultures. And to have the time to sit with your mentees after a visit and discuss "How did that go?" and "What did you learn?"

You want to feel you have personally contributed to the improvement journey for Peterborough, helping develop their new Academy Model to get the very best outcomes for children, young people and their families.

Does this strike a chord with you? If so, keep reading to see if you could be a fit for the Senior Practitioner role within our new Children's Social Work Academy.

You value a model that gives you a stable base to support your newly qualified social workers to transition from academy case holding support to their permanent social work teams. When not supervising, you want to deliver training without being drawn into other distractions (which, as you know, can often be the case with other development models).

You love to use your experience to guide people and help them learn - knowing that if you have a knowledge gap you can fill this in by touching on the relevant policies and procedures to inform your pedagogy.

If you haven't had experience in all areas of social work, you have the confidence to say "Yes, I've been in assessment for four years, but I know how to transfer my knowledge to other areas", for example. Or the understanding that strong leaders don't always know everything at the outset, but continuously grow and develop.

You believe that the best practice is 'family shared practice', where many decisions about a child or young person are taken with them, their families and carers.

As a qualified social worker, with experience working relationally within a safeguarding context, you are equally happy stepping into a role supporting newly qualified social workers or, when needed, deputising for the Team Manager.

This role reports into the new Team Manager within the Children's Social Work Academy, so together you will have the opportunity to grow and shape the new offering from the outset.