Social Worker 1 or 2 - Fostering Team
Job description
37 hours per week

Bridgend County Borough Council offers a great opportunity to further your social work career. We want the best Social Workers to join us in the Fostering Team where we work closely with foster carers and other professionals to ensure the best outcomes are achieved for our children and young people.

Bridgend Fostering is a well-established supportive and stable staff team who provide a range of foster care placements to children and young people who are looked after by Bridgend County Borough Council.   In addition to providing Emergency, short term and long term foster care placements, we also operate specialist schemes such as Transitional Foster Carers and parent and child and family link.

To ensure that our foster carers are well supported Supervising Social Workers have manageable caseloads and are able to access a Placement Support Worker, who will work with carers to ensure that appropriate advice and guidance is provided to enabling them to continue to provide care to the children/young people who they are looking after and can include support during a crisis.

In addition to this the Fostering Service also a dedicated team of reunification workers who can provide support to a child during transition between placements and work collaboratively with Safeguarding to support children and young people return home.

Bridgend Fostering Team are part of the Cwm Taff Region and as part of our approach to recruiting additional foster carers we have developed a regional front door to ensure a timely response to any new enquiries. We are also excited to be part of the plans to develop an all Wales approach to the marketing and recruitment of foster carers in the future.

In 2020 Children’s Social Care launched the Outcome Focussed Approach Social Work model which underpins all of our practice in Bridgend. All new staff will be provided with a suite of training that will support them to develop their practice in line with the principles of the model. We encourage applications from both experienced Social Workers and those in their first two years of practice. In return you will receive a robust induction, regular reflective supervision as well as additional support and mentoring where required. Our programme of support for newly qualified social workers won the ‘Developing a confident and sustainable workforce’ award in the 2018 Social Care Wales accolades. Additionally you will be able to further your career with both development and promotional opportunities.

We are a reflective organisation that continuously builds on its strengths and is committed to the principle that the most effective way of improving outcomes for all Children, Young People and Families is through the provision of accessible, universal services. Join us and you will work in a rewarding, learning environment where staff feel valued.

A relocation package up to £8,000 will be considered for this post.

Protecting children, young people or adults at risk is a core responsibility of all council employees.

Applicants should note that a criminal records check by the Disclosure & Barring Service (DBS) will be necessary for the successful applicant.

For further information on working as a Social Worker in Bridgend Fostering Team, please contact: Jo Lloyd-Jones ([email protected]) or Alex Fitzpatrick ([email protected] )
Closing date 27 September
Shortlisting 28 September
Interviews 14 October

Click here for the Job Description & Person Specification

To apply for this job click 'Apply Online’