Social Worker - Short Break Service

Our Story:

Halton is a vibrant local authority with a rich history and heritage, featuring two iconic bridges that connect communities across the River Mersey. Located in Cheshire, Halton boasts excellent transport links between Liverpool and Manchester, as well as close proximity to both Liverpool John Lennon and Manchester Airports.

Our progressive community strategy aims to bring about meaningful, long-term improvements that enhance lives. It’s an exciting time to join us as we develop new policies and transform the way people access services.

We are immensely proud that when asked what’s great about working for Halton, the most popular response from our workforce has been ‘our colleagues’.

Our Team:

Halton’s Short Break Service for Children with Disabilities has a small team of enthusiastic and dedicated workers who are committed to improving the lives of disabled children and their families. We are looking to appoint a specialist Social Worker who shares our commitment to provide services that enable families of children with disabilities to have an improved quality of life within their communities. You will have a key role in assessing the needs of disabled children who have complex needs, producing a robust, person centred, Child in Need plan and supporting them to access short break services including overnight breaks in our residential provision or via a personal budget.

The Short Breaks social work role includes the statutory responsibilities for ensuring that children with disabilities are visited in their overnight setting to ensure that they are adequately safeguarded, provided with quality personal care and offered a range of activities and opportunities to enhance their quality of life and promote their development.

Your Contributions:

You must be a qualified social worker, be registered with Social Work England and have a working knowledge of relevant government legislation, guidance and local procedures relating to children with disabilities, their carers and safeguarding. You should have experience of working collaboratively with colleagues from other organisations, including social care, health, education, commissioned services and the voluntary sector as you will represent the team in multi-agency panels and task groups.

You must have previous experience of working with children with disabilities and have excellent communication skills including the use of alternative communication systems such as PECS, Makaton, social stories etc. You must have experience of supporting young people with complex health needs, a learning disability, social communication difficulties and challenging behaviour.

You will manage an individual caseload and as such be able to prioritise your own workload and meet challenging deadlines. Case recording must be clear, analytical and timely. Your role will also include working with the Manager and Senior Early Help Officer to support the delivery and development of high quality short breaks services.

In return, you will receive regular high quality supervision & support, wide ranging training opportunities and benefit from the existing knowledge and professionalism of your peers. You can expect that your commitment to your own professional learning and development will be matched by Halton’s own commitment to support social workers to continue their professional development including strong links to local universities, specialist training and membership of Research in Practice.

Halton's Short Break Service for Children with Disabilities works with families living in all areas of Halton. The Service is based at Warrington Road Family Hub, Widnes. You be required to travel to visit families in their own homes and elsewhere in the community

Our Offer:

Aside from working with a great team, our employees have access to a fantastic range of benefits, including:

• A generous annual holiday allowance starting at 34 days per year (including bank holidays), increasing with long service
• Membership of our defined benefit, salary-linked Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) with generous employer contributions
• 3 x Salary Life Cover via Local Government Pension Scheme
• Investment in your personal development
• Free Car Parking at HBC sites
• Flexible working arrangements (*delete if not applicable)
• Extensive employee benefits platform including discounted shopping, car leasing, gym memberships, wellbeing hub and Employee Assistance Programme.

Note to applicants:

Applications are invited from all Social Workers including Newly Qualified Social Workers who are able to demonstrate they are to formally gain their qualification, and be eligible to register with Social Work England, within the next 3 months. Please confirm which level of post you are applying for as directed within your application.

If you are applying for this position as a Newly Qualified Social Worker, you will be expected to undertake the ASYE programme. Continued employment in the role is subject to successful completion of the programme.

Applications will not be accepted where an applicant has previously failed to complete the ASYE programme with another employer.

Next Steps:

At Halton Borough Council, we want all of our candidates to feel well-informed so if you would like to have an informal chat about this role, please contact Anita Blakey (Principal Manager) on 01515116647

Interviews will take place on Tuesday 12th August 2025

At Halton Borough Council we want to ensure that our communities are represented across our workforce and a vital part of this is to encourage diversity in all respects. We are committed to making our recruitment practices barrier-free and tailored to best suit the needs and strength of the individual. This includes making adjustments for people with a disability, neurodiversity or with long-term health conditions. If you require accommodations, please reach out during the recruitment process so that we can make this the best possible experience for you – resourcing@halton.gov.uk

Please refer to the attached Job Profile for further information about the role and our values.

We reserve the right to close this vacancy earlier than the specified date should we receive sufficient applications. If you’re interested, please complete your application as early as possible.

We look forward to receiving your application!