Practice Educator (maternity cover)

Job Purpose

The postholder will be responsible for two key organisational areas:
– Practice Education to an allocation of student social workers: 80% of workload
– Support with induction planning and administrative tasks relevant to the student placement programme: 20% of workload

The postholder will be responsible for providing student social workers with effective, high-quality supervision and support throughout their practice placements and maintaining accurate records of student work undertaken to inform holistic assessments of students’ practice. This role will entail stakeholder engagement both with internal leaders and external partners. The role will involve maintaining close working relationships and crossover workstreams with the Business Support Team, Health & Safety systems, and compliance responsibilities.

Main Duties and Responsibilities

Student Social Work Placements:

• Maintain relationships with key placement providers through provision of high-quality practice education,
• Practice Educate placements for their entirety at the charity,
• Write reports relating to the above.

Support a continual and iterative induction process:

• Provide Student Placement Lead with support when inducting students to all relevant systems – utilising experts across the organisation to deliver elements of the package,
• Work in partnership with Business Support to implement appropriate systems relating to e-learning and hand over to line management during induction,
• Support the arranging of accounts, in partnership with the Business Support Team to enable new users access to the organisation’s systems.

Other duties and responsibilities:

• Working collaboratively with the Student Placement Lead to report on the above areas and work with external and internal stakeholders to realise the Return on Investment (ROI) of the above programmes,
• Working collaboratively with the Student Placement Lead to expand the reach and scope of placements across the charity, ensuring students continue to have an excellent placement experience at Gaddum,
• To support the Student Placement Lead in the delivery of training and information to external partners and supporting new opportunities that may become open to the charity.

Health & Safety, Quality, and Other Compliance:

• To ensure compliance and registration with Social Work England.
• To demonstrate commitment to Continuous Professional Development.
• To ensure compliance with Health & Safety systems across all sites,
• To support the Business Support Team in their coordination of health, safety, and risk management, developing and ensuring the delivery of Action Plans where required and feeding into matters relating to placements,
• To support the Student Placement Lead in monitoring student learning opportunities and ensure Gaddum continue to provide excellent practice learning placements at first and final level,
• To support the Student Placement Lead in the planning for team meetings with On Site Supervisors to share best practice and knowledge across teams,
• Support the implementation of Policies & Procedures (new and existing) so as to standardise the best practice across the charity.

The details contained in this job description, particularly the principal accountabilities, reflect the content of the job at the date the job description was prepared. It should be remembered, however, that it is inevitable that, over time, the nature of individual jobs will change; existing duties may be lost and other duties may be gained, without changing the general character of the duties, or the level of responsibility entailed. Consequently, this job description may be revised from time to time.

All staff are expected to work within all Gaddum policies and procedures.