Opportunities, training and progression in children's services

Opportunities within children's services

Children’s Services is organised by area, function and specialism. You’ll find our offices in:

Bodmin
Camborne
Liskeard
Penzance
Truro
St Austell

We have opportunities for passionate, committed Social Workers and Advanced Practitioners in our multi-disciplinary teams across Cornwall in both full and part time roles.

These include:

Family Assessment and Support (FAS) Teams
Child Protection Teams
Disabled Children and Therapy Service
Our Multi Agency Referral Unit (MARU)
Specialist Social Work roles including Gweres Kernow, working with children with Harmful Sexual Behaviour, 16+, Fostering and Adoption, and preventative teams.

We’ll help you progress in your career, reward you for your commitment, and provide career options and pay to match your expertise. We’ll support you as you progress, and actively encourage the best practitioners to remain in front line practice. For this reason, we offer the same salary to Advanced Practitioners as we do to frontline managers.

In recognition of the vital contribution you make, we offer the following benefits outside of our core benefits:

We offer a Welcome Payment of £4,000 for qualified social workers who have completed their ASYE and are new to social work in Cornwall Council. This is paid upon successful completion of probation period.
An individualised induction to meet your specific needs and learning.
An excellent core curriculum to support your ongoing development with a high-quality programme of evidence-based learning and development to enhance skills and practice.
An outstanding career and qualification pathway, recognised by Ofsted as a foundation of Cornwall’s good practice, which will support your progression.
Support from our dedicated Practice Educators throughout your progression pathway.
Regular, high quality case and reflective supervision.
Supportive management and leadership.
Support to access temporary accommodation if moving from outside of Cornwall.
A license to access Community Care Inform and Research in Practice.
Payment of your Social Work England registration fees.
Sponsorship for eligible overseas social work applicants.

About you

You’re a Social Worker registered with Social Work England with:

Previous experience working in a social care environment.
A proven track record of excellent practice improving the lives of children.
A high level of written and verbal communication skills.
The ability 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 proof of these in your practice.
The skills to undertake assessments and to use evidence-based practice tools to devise, implement and review care plans.

Please see our Role Profiles below for full details:

If your experience is within another sector (e.g. Adult Social Care or the Voluntary sector), we can provide an additional supported induction period.

Our Advanced Practitioner salaries are commensurate with Team Manager salaries. As such, these roles require professionals with significant experience of evidence based practice with children and families.

Overseas applicants

We can provide overseas applicants sponsorship support. To enquire further please e-mail the Recruitment Team ccrecruitment@cornwall.gov.uk

Training and progression

Our Core Curriculum offers a range of training at different stages of your career and is linked to our Career and Qualification pathway. It has been recognised by Ofsted as an important element of our journey to becoming an outstanding authority.

Among many types of training, you can learn how to use essential social work tools, including Motivational Interviewing and Signs of Safety. For leaders, training includes the 4 x 4 x 4 model of reflective supervision course for practice supervisors, and the Practice Supervisor Development Programme delivered by Research in Practice. In addition, we offer courses on a wide range of topics including autism, chronologies, Trauma-informed Practice, children’s mental health and well-being and cultural capability.

The training offered in our Core Curriculum is further complemented by the safeguarding training offered through our Safeguarding Children Partnership. This includes training on different aspects of neglect, child sexual exploitation, child sexual abuse, harmful sexual behaviour, sudden and unexplained infant death and sentinel injuries and unexplained bruising in non-mobile infants.

Finally, we have a programme of annual conferences and events that highlight specific priorities; in the past couple of years these have included conferences on Prioritising Adolescence and Child Sexual Abuse. These events offer an opportunity to learn about recent developments nationally and locally.

Your development

Further to completing your Assessed and Supported Year of Employment, you can progress in your career via our Post Qualifying Career and Qualification pathway, supporting Social Workers in their learning and development by rewarding their development via increasing grades.
All learning for social workers is supported by a full team of Practice Educators. We believe that wanting to remain in practice shouldn’t prevent you from progressing. Therefore, we have two Advanced Practitioner roles (Grade 4).
Consultant Social Workers develop a specialism in an area of child development, risk to children or area of practice and then share that knowledge and skill with colleagues through mentoring, coaching and informal supervision.
Principal Social Workers are directly involved in practice, holding a small caseload, supervising practitioners, facilitating team-based learning and deputising for the Team Manager.
Team Managers are responsible for supporting and supervising a small multi-disciplinary team with the aim of consistently achieving practice quality standards and performance targets as the basis for improving outcomes for children and young people. Team Managers have their own career and qualification pathway, allowing them to move into Advanced Manager roles (Grade 5).