Supervising Social Worker - Maternity cover

Ready to Make a Real Difference? Join Our Fostering Service Today!

Are you driven by purpose, motivated by compassion, and inspired to help children thrive? If you’re looking for a role where your work truly matters, this is your moment.

The Role

We are recruiting Supervising Social Workers to join our vibrant and supportive Fostering Service. You’ll be part of one of our two fostering teams—working across short and long-term placements—or supporting our Special Guardianship and Connected Carers team.

In this role, you’ll work directly with foster carers to help them create stable, nurturing environments for children in care. Your work will include:

• Regular visits, proactive support, and reflective practice
• Applying attachment, secure base, and trauma-informed theory
• Providing guidance while completing annual reviews and essential checks
• Attending professional meetings and reviews
• Assessing support networks, respite needs, and enhanced care packages
• Contributing to our safeguarding function by assessing and responding to risk

Support You Can Count On

We value our team, and we invest in your growth. You will have access to:

• Regular 1-to-1 supervision for reflection and learning
• Group supervision with the team and a clinical practitioner
• In-house and bespoke training programmes
• Service development days
• Community events and team away days
• Opportunities for voluntary paid out-of-hours duty work

About You

You are enthusiastic, passionate, and deeply committed to improving the lives of children and families. You bring a strength-based, person-centred approach and can balance challenging demands with ongoing professional growth. Your role will be vital in ensuring the wellbeing, safety, and inclusion of the children and carers you support.

If you’re looking for a role where you can make a meaningful impact every day—and be supported by a service that values your development—this is the opportunity for you.

For an informal discussion about the role, please contact Asanti Khm-Sankofa via email Asanti.Khm-Sankofa@southwark.gov.uk

This post requires a satisfactory Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) DBS check at Enhanced level.

Benefits and more information:

In your role, we want you to feel supported, challenged and rewarded. You will benefit from our family-friendly policies including flexible working, home working, and a local government pension scheme, plus many other staff benefits. You will join a motivated, driven and supportive team that strives for excellence and values its members. You will also be part of a successful and high-achieving development team that is making a real difference to the lives of residents in the borough. For more information about the wide variety of benefits you can take advantage of please visit our Staff Benefits page.

Closing date: 12th December

Interview date: W/C 5th January

Guaranteed Interview Scheme:

As part of our commitment to inclusion, we offer guaranteed interviews for specific groups of people. To qualify, you'll need to meet the minimum requirements for the role, and identify with one of the below criteria:

• Members of the Armed Forces and veterans
• Are currently in care, or have previously been in care
• If you consider yourself to be disabled or if you have a long-term health condition

We are an organisation who is passionate about our people and understands that richness of diversity is a requirement to provide the best possible services to our communities. This is demonstrated through our council-wide ambitious commitment to tackle racial inequality in our communities and workforce through our Southwark Stands Together programme. We particularly welcome applications from members of the Black, Asian and ethnic minority communities to increase representation at senior management level in the Council.

About Southwark:

We are the largest local authority social landlord in London, managing 55,000 homes lived in by 40% of Southwark’s residents. We are home to over 18,300 businesses including iconic London venues and social enterprises and we have a young, diverse and growing population.

At Southwark we are committed to making our borough just and fair and are taking positive action to tackle inequalities. Our residents and communities are our greatest asset and the passion we have for Southwark is shared by millions of Londoners who enjoy our outstanding cultural offer, use our hospitals and attend our universities. Our refreshed borough plan and focus on Southwark Stands Together, (which is our work with Southwark’s communities and the council’s staff to tackle racism, injustice and inequality) underpins all that we do.

Attachments

• Please Click Here For the Job Description and Person Specification