Senior Social Worker

An exciting permanent opportunity has arisen to join the Prevention and Early Intervention Front Door Team as a Senior Social Worker within our Adult Early Help Service. This is a full-time position working 37 hours per week. Adult Early Help supports adults and unpaid carers across Cambridgeshire to identify solutions that maintain independence, build on existing strengths and reduce reliance on formal services.

Through person-centred conversations, the team connects people with community resources, voluntary organisations, assistive technology and practical support that can prevent, reduce or delay the need for longer-term care and support. As our Senior Social Worker, you will be a key member of the leadership team, helping to shape practice and support the continued development of the service. You will provide professional expertise within a multidisciplinary team, promoting strengths-based practice, sound decision-making and proportionate approaches to risk and safeguarding.

The role combines practice leadership, supervision and service development, offering an excellent opportunity for an experienced Social Worker who is passionate about prevention, early intervention and supporting others to develop their skills and confidence. As part of the wider Prevention and Early Intervention Service, you will work closely with colleagues across Adult Social Care and partner organisations to achieve positive outcomes for people and communities across Cambridgeshire.

What will you be doing? As a Senior Social Worker within Adult Early Help, you will play a key role in supporting the delivery of high-quality, strengths-based practice across the team. Working closely with the Team Manager, you will provide professional leadership, guidance and oversight to colleagues, helping to ensure that people receive timely, proportionate and preventative support that promotes independence and wellbeing.

You will act as a source of expertise on adult social care legislation, safeguarding and positive risk-taking, supporting practitioners to make confident and defensible decisions in complex situations. Through reflective supervision, case discussions and informal practice support, you will help develop the knowledge, skills and confidence of Adult Support Coordinators, Social Workers and other colleagues across the team.

A significant part of the role involves line management and staff development. You will support performance, wellbeing and learning, creating an environment where practitioners feel valued, challenged and supported to grow. You will contribute to the induction and development of new team members and help identify training and development opportunities that strengthen practice across the service.

Working alongside the Team Manager, you will contribute to quality assurance activities including case audits, practice reviews and the implementation of service improvements. You will use learning from audits, safeguarding activity and feedback from people accessing support to help drive continual improvement and maintain high standards of practice.

About you: You must be a Qualified Social Worker with current Social Work England Registration, and post-qualifying experience within Social Care. You will need a good working knowledge of the Care Act 2014 and Mental Capacity Act 2005. Experience of multi-disciplinary working to enable best outcomes for individuals is key. It is imperative that you have strong communication skills, a confident telephone manner and can work on your own initiative. Good planning and organisation skills will be key, and you should be used to working under pressure to meet deadlines, allowing flexibility and resilience.

Experience of supporting the development of others is essential and of line managing staff desirable. You will have the ability to lead with confidence and of sharing your knowledge to mentor and coach others.

About us: Cambridgeshire is a great place to work and live with a diverse population, an urban centre in Cambridge, historic Isle of Ely, Huntingdon and St Ives as well as more rural landscapes. Our four values are central to our culture, driving everything we do. We are proud to serve the diverse communities of Cambridgeshire and want our workforce to be reflective of this diversity, which we firmly believe benefits our colleagues, the organisation and our communities.

If you don’t meet every single requirement in the job role but think this could be you, please don’t be put off. We are committed to building a workplace that is compassionate and inclusive as well as diverse, so if you think you could be a good candidate for this role please consider applying and speak to the recruiting manager if you have any questions.

We collect relevant diversity data for monitoring as part of the recruitment process to understand the diversity of our applicants and monitor any trends throughout the recruitment processes so that we can take meaningful action. We are proud to be a Disability Confident Leader. We fully support providing reasonable adjustments throughout our recruitment process, as well as when you join us, and we encourage candidates to contact the Hiring Manager to discuss any adjustment needs.