The role:

We are keen to recruit Locum social workers with experience of statutory social work with children and families. Contracts can be offered in the initial period for up to 6 months, to provide candidates with stability and security in the role.

We want to make sure that we are responsive to our agency workers' needs. Our model of working from referral to permanence or closure means that we have the ability to cater caseloads to our agency workers' interests - on the whole, we offer our agency workers a caseload of Child Protection and Child in Need but can discuss allocating court cases or cared for children, where this is in the interests of our agency staff.

We are centrally based in town hall district of Stockport - all of social work teams are co-located with our health, police, Early Help and MASSH colleagues and currently we have some vacancies across our borough. Our average caseload is ***; whilst there are some fluctuations across teams, we are dedicated as an authority to ensuring a manageable caseload for our social workers and we review this regularly.

We ensure a strong induction for our agency workers, with a gradual increase in caseload and complexity of work. Alongside this, we offer high quality reflective supervision on a monthly basis - all of our team leaders are trained in reflective and systemic supervision. There are opportunities for group and reflective supervision delivered by senior practitioners and our workforce development team and there are opportunities to seek specialist advice and consultation from our Aspire service about domestic abuse and complex safeguarding.

Each team has 1 team leader, 2 senior practitioners and 6 social workers. The teams are focussed on small geographical areas across Stockport and have link relationships with local schools, health professionals and borough-wide services through our Team around the School model. Our team leaders and senior practitioners are well-established and know Stockport really well and have really good relationships with our senior management team.

In terms of working patterns, as a local authority, we recognise that flexibility for our workforce is key. Our social workers tell us that they appreciate time spent together as a team but also that they enjoy the option of working from home as well. We have modern technology to support this and we are happy to discuss and consider requests for flexible or reduced hours, to suit individual candidates' needs.

We are open to questions from and conversations with prospective candidates and look forward to welcoming you into our family!

• Honest & Supportive Career Consultant
• Additional Dedicated Payroll Consultant
• Holistic Support Package for Mental and Physical Wellbeing
• Access to the broadest range of temporary and permanent vacancies nationwide
• Access to Exclusive Projects
• Subsidised training
• Free DBS check
• CV writing service
• Interview technique coaching

Caritas Recruitment is acting as an Employment Business in relation to this vacancy.