Senior Social Worker

Job overview
We are seeking to recruit a Senior Social Worker to join the Adult Community Mental Health Service (ACMHS) in South West Hertfordshire.

We welcome diversity in our workforce and encourage applicants from people of all ages and backgrounds, such as those with lived experience of mental health difficulties.

Our friendly team is based in Borehamwood and provides services to the locality of Hertsmere.

Please contact Nicola Ballingall-Hardy on 07814 353501 for an informal chat or to arrange a visit. We look forward to hearing from you!

This role attracts a Golden Hello of £3,500, new employees only.

£1,500 on commencement and £2,000 on completion of one years’ employment.

Main duties of the job
The successful candidate will:

work as part of the leadership team providing professional supervision and support to social care staff and expert advice to the wider team
carry out assessments of need, plan and deliver services and review outcomes with the individual, their personal support networks and support providers
ensure that practice within the teams is responsive, inclusive and community based with a clear focus on outcomes
be registered with Social Work England
hold a full valid driving license and have access to a car to use regularly for business purposes (unless you have a disability as defined by the Equality Act 2010)


Working for our organisation
We are one of just five mental health trusts to achieve an overall rating of ‘Outstanding’ from the Care Quality Commission

Our family of over 3500 members of staff provide health and social care for people with mental ill health, physical ill health and learning disabilities across Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, and Norfolk, delivering these services within the community and several inpatient settings. Everything is underpinned by choice, independence and equality, with our Trust values embedded throughout:

Welcoming. Kind. Positive. Respectful. Professional.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities
All Senior Social Workers must be registered with Social Work England
As a Senior Social Worker, you will act as a champion and leader of social care and safeguarding within your locality. You will be expected to give robust, consistent, and expert social care practice advice in partnership with other specialist senior social care colleagues. You will reinforce the need to deliver high quality, recovery-focused and cost-effective social care services to service users and their carers, focused on the principles of choice, control and independence, as well as ensuring safety.
You will actively address adversity and will support adults at risk of social inclusion and assist adults accessing support to deal with a range of adverse circumstances. You will actively champion equality and diversity and be expected to challenge discrimination in all it’s forms as part of your role.
You will have a small caseload of complex cases and will provide supervision to both experienced and newly qualified social workers. You will support social workers in your locality to maintain constant reflection and development of their practice and will support their continuing professional development in line with the standards set out by the professional regulator, Social Work England.
You will be a practicing AMHP or prepared to undertake the training required to undertake the AMHP role. As an AMHP, you will provide advice, support, and supervision to other AMHPs.
You will be expected to work in partnership with service users and carers, so that they can feel empowered, and services can be improved as a result of feedback of their experiences.
Partnership working is a key component of this post, both within and outside of the Trust, and you will need to be innovative in ensuring that there is a range of appropriate services locally to support individual recovery journeys.
For a more detailed description, p[lease see attached JD and PS.

Person specification
Experience
Essential criteria

- An appropriate professional social work qualification
- Registration with Social Work England
- Education to degree level
- Masters Degree or equivalent training
- Approved Mental Health Professional training and qualification (or prepared to undertake training within a year of appointment)
- Relevant post-qualifying training for social workers

Desirable criteria

- Other post-qualifying training e.g. CBT, family therapy
- Best Interests Assessment training

Experience and Knowledge
Essential criteria

- Post qualification experience with demonstrable evidence of excellent practice at a high level
knowledge of legislation, statutory guidance, theory and policy in relation to relevant adult and children’s social care.
- Experience of undertaking assessments, focussed as personalisation, choice and control, and care planning
- Understanding and experience of personal budgets and direct payments
- Experience of supervising and mentoring staff
- Experience of multidisciplinary working and evidence of collaborative work

About us
Hertfordshire Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust (HPFT) is rated by the Care Quality Commission as an Outstanding provider of mental health and learning disability services. In 2021, we won the prestigious Health Service Journal award for Mental Health Trust of the Year, with the judges saying they were “blown away” by our people’s achievements and that everything they saw “sings and hums”. This year, our staff rated us the 4th best mental health and learning disability trust to work for out of all 52 trusts in the country. Our staff tell us that they are proud to be part of the HPFT team, proud of the standard of care we provide and proud that service users are our top priority. Our people tell us they feel supported though a great development, wellbeing and work-life balance offer and a highly compassionate, values-driven culture. We are equally proud of our staff, who live our values of being welcoming, kind, positive, respectful and professional so that together we provide great care and great outcomes for our service users and carers.

If you would like to join a team to be proud of and you share our values and passion for great care and outcomes for our service users and carers, we would love to hear from you.

Additional Information
HPFT is committed to being an equal opportunities employer and in order to reflect the diversity of its population, positively encourages applications from all areas of the community. We aim to be a representative organisation with regards to age, disability, ethnicity, gender, beliefs and sexual orientation and are fully committed to equality, diversity and human rights and encourage applications from all sections of the community including users of mental health services.

The Trust is committed to helping staff balance work and home life and welcomes applications from candidates wishing to work part-time or under flexible working arrangements.

Infection Control

All our staff will need to comply with current Infection Prevention and Control measures which could include wearing a mask on all our Trust sites and in all roles

Employer certification / accreditation badges
Trust ID