Senior Social Worker

Job Title: Senior Social Worker - Gateway Assessment and Connections Team
Location: Countywide
Starting Salary: £38,296 with the opportunity to progress to a maximum of £42,503
Hours: Full time and part time positions available
Contract: Permanent 

Relocation package, £1,000 welcome payment & lease car* Terms Apply

Are you looking for an exciting new challenge? We are looking for Social Work England (SWE) registered Social Workers to join our new Connected Lives Gateway Service for both Older People and Adults with Disabilities. This service aims to prevent, reduce and delay need by ensuring people access a wide range of information/advice, intervention, and support at the right time and in the most uncomplicated way possible.

The Gateway Service is a unique opportunity to work preventively and ensure people have the right equipment and housing adaptations to enable them to live a full life. You will carry out first assessments, including eligibility decision, personal budget and care and support planning based on an up to 12-week pathway.

This will require working collaboratively with Specialist Care at Home and bed-based enablement providers. This will include operational links with the Voluntary, Community, Faith and Social Enterprise preventative strategy, Herts Help, and social prescribing. Relationships will also be developed with Hertfordshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (HPFT) Single Point of Access, the Frailty single point of contact, & Health partners. In addition, you will also be responsible for the following: 

• Assisting Management Team with prioritising and allocating work and resolving day-to-day operating resource issues.
• May provide specialist development or support to team members. Control team activities to meet (daily/weekly/monthly) caseloads performance targets and schedules.
• Cascade information on the corporate context so that organisational messages are understood in the team and disseminating and designing best practices to help teams understand and enact changes and improvement.
• May support the control of budgets to deliver service priorities and to ensure appropriate resources are available

You will promote and supporting a strength-based approach to all interventions to maximise independence, health, and well-being by offering enablement opportunities to prevent, delay or reduce the need for Adult Social Care.  This will require you to apply your creativity working with residents to ensure their safety and continued independence. Your knowledge of local services to support people to access appropriate community resources is also crucial as will working alongside Community Care Officers to offer guidance and case support with assessment needs, mentoring and case consultations.

More widely you will also be an ambassador for our HCC Values (RISE), Behaviours, and Professional Standards, both internally and externally. This will also involve contributing to the learning and development of others, including mentoring and supervision. Alongside this, we have excellent training opportunities to support your continuing professional development and a comprehensive benefits package offered through Herts Rewards.

You will need to be SWE registered with a Social Work Degree. It is crucial that you have knowledge and experience of relevant legislation such as the Care Act 2014, Mental Capacity Act 2005, and other social care legislation as you will be managing complex cases.

An understanding of person-centred care is important as this is a key principle within Hertfordshire’s Connected Lives Practice to ensure people are supported to maintain and develop their independence.

You will need to be a confident individual, a good team player, and a decision maker with the ability to work autonomously with complex cases to enable people to live independently in the community.  You will conduct assessments using Adult Care Services’ Connected Lives Assessment framework, to achieve desired outcomes. We need you to be able to work successfully with partners and many other agencies for the benefit of citizens.  Your self-organisation is key, as is a ‘can do’ attitude  

We are an inclusive and supportive team, and you will gain a unique and extensive experience in the field of adult social care, safeguarding practice and multi-disciplinary working supporting adults from 18 years of age. The team is focused on prevention and works to promote personalisation and focusing on the wellbeing of the people we support.

This is a rolling adverts. Applications will be checked weekly. 

For an informal discussion and more information please contact: Jayne Crockett 01438 843183 and James Medus 01438 843546