Social Worker
Are you a qualified, trauma informed and anti-oppressive Social Worker who is passionate about making a positive difference to the lives of children and their families? We are looking for a motivated, thoughtful and compassionate Social Worker to join the kinship care team to support us deliver our BHCC kinship care local offer: Kinship in Brighton & Hove
This is an exciting opportunity to work in a specialist, relationship-based service assessing and supporting kinship carers. You will be part of a supportive pod structure where social workers build meaningful relationships with families and use these relationships to promote safety, stability and positive outcomes. This is an exciting time for kinship practice as kinship care is at the heart of the children’s social care reforms.
We are happy to answer any questions you might have, so please do reach out if you’d like to discuss the role further to Zoë Rosenfield, kinship care team pod manager at zoe.rosenfield@brighton-hove.gov.uk
Interviewsto be held on 11thand 12thNovember 2026
Contract type: This role is permanent.
About the role
As a social worker in the kinship care team, you will assess prospective kinship carers and prepare reports for court and fostering panels, as well as providing comprehensive support to kinship families. This includes supervision of kinship foster carers, as well as support for carers with legal orders such as Special Guardians. You would also have opportunities to facilitate kinship kids' activities, support groups for carers and deliver workshops and training for kinship carers.
We are looking for an experienced social worker with an interest in trauma informed approaches, therapeutic parenting and has a professional, can-do attitude who would like to join our experienced, supportive, reflective, and friendly team. Our team has a strong learning culture where you will be encouraged with your PDP goals and development and will have opportunities to contribute to the growth and development of the service. Reflective, anti-discriminatory and anti-racist practice are key to these roles.
We are seeking candidates who meet the person specification and criteria and who are above all passionate and committed to supporting kinship families provide reparative care to children to enable them to recover from trauma and benefit from stability.
Encouraging a diverse workforce
Our city is known and loved for its diversity. Not only is the mixture of people, culture and skills vital to the economic and social development of the city, it's what makes Brighton & Hove such a great place to live, work and visit. We are committed to developing and retaining a workforce that is representative of the diverse communities we serve so we welcome applications from individuals from all backgrounds. In order to achieve our aims of proportionate representation, we particularly encourage applicants from a BME or White Other background as well as those who identify as disabled, male or trans.
Find out more about our commitment to being a fair and inclusive place to work where everyone can achieve their potential by reading about our fair and inclusive actions, our anti-racism strategy and the work we are doing to encourage a diverse workforce (brighton-hove.gov.uk).
Why work for us?
As a council, we want to:
• be connected
• be confident
• be innovative and creative
• be diverse and inclusive
• be healthy and psychologically safe
For more information about our values and the benefits of working at the council, visit Why work for us which gives details of our wellbeing support, our benefits including leave and pensions as well as details of our training and development.
How to apply
Please read our Apply for a job at the council pages carefully. They give you all the guidance you need to complete your application as well as information on what will happen after you’ve submitted your application and at interview.
As part of your application, you will need to provide your education and career history and answer some application/shortlisting questions. Your answers to the application/shortlisting questions are the most important part of your application as they will be used in the shortlisting process to assess whether you meet the essential requirements for the role that are set out in the person specification and to decide whether you should be offered an interview. Before you start your application, please read our Shortlisting questions guidance (brighton-hove.gov.uk) as this gives important advice which will increase your chance of success in the shortlisting process.
AI advice for candidates
We are interested in hearing about your experience and skills in your own words. While we value people who know how to use AI, we ask that you minimise using it in your application.
We are keen to hear how your experience and skills align to our values and the skills and experience needed to perform well in our roles with clear real examples from you. To support you in this, we have guidance on using the STAR model which can help you ensure you are telling us your whole story. We also provide clarity on the skills we are looking for in our adverts and in the job description/person specification attached to each job advert.
All the applications we receive are read by at least two hiring managers and we do not use AI in this process. Our experience of reading applications is that those that have heavily used AI contain generic paragraphs that are strikingly similar to other applicants’ responses. This makes it extremely difficult to differentiate between applications, and doesn't give us enough evidence of your individual skills. There is a risk that we will therefore not be able to shortlist you. Instead, we recommend you ensure your application stands out by presenting clear examples of your actual skills and experiences in your own words.
Additional information
Your starting salary will be pro rata if the above position is less than 37 hours or term-time only.
Please note that this post is exempt from the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974, and is subject to a Disclosure & Barring Service (DBS) Check.
We are a workplace that supports flexibility and employee wellbeing in the way we work whilst providing the best service for our customers. Team and service working arrangements are designed to support both employee work life balance and team collaboration. These would be part of your individual working arrangements alongside any personal preference agreed with your manager in advance of joining. Your contractual location will be the designated council office for your team and travel to and from your contractual location would be at your own expense.
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