Children's Social Worker - Fostering, Recruitment & Assessment Team (FRAT) - Secondment/FTC

Role: Assessing Social Worker – Fostering Recruitment & Assessment Team

Division: Supporting Families Division

Salary: Grade I-K - £44,430 - £55,710 plus travel allowance of £1,280 per annum

Contract: 12-Month Secondment/Fixed Term Contract

Location: LBTH Town Hall, 106 Whitechapel Road, London E1 1BJ

About Us

We believe that the best place for children is to be raised within their own families, immediate or wider, wherever it is safe and appropriate to do so. In Tower Hamlets we are committed to building relationships and strengthening families by working with people in a compassionate and understanding way.

We are ambitious for Tower Hamlets children and families and endeavour for every child and young person to be healthy, safe and successful.

Tower Hamlets is a progressive, ambitious and diverse place to work. We place children and families at the heart of everything that we do and are relentless in our pursuit of positive outcomes for all.

Our Better Together Practice Framework is based on the ideas and concepts which underpin Restorative Practice and draws from other strength-based approaches, such as Systemic and Trauma Informed Practice

Our C-Change approach: Connect, Curious, Community, Co-Produce, Collaborate, Check, sets out “6 Cs ” for our work with children, young people their parents and carers, and each other.

About the Role

We are recruiting two experienced social workers for our Fostering Recruitment & Assessment Team.

If you are passionate about building relationships with children and families working towards positive outcomes for children and have at least 1 year of post-qualifying experience in a statutory Children’s Social Care team, we would love you to apply.

Fostering Recruitment & Assessment Team (FRAT) - You will work as part of a small team consisting of a team manager, 3 social workers, a family finding coordinator, and a community worker, working together to recruit and assess prospective foster carers. We are also responsible for the assessment of family and friends foster carers, and private foster carers.

You will be actively involved in recruiting and supporting prospective carers through the assessment process, up to Panel and/or the court process.

About You

We are looking for motivated social work practitioners, passionate about fostering and kinship and providing quality care for children who have experienced trauma.

The role will involve supporting the Team at targeted recruitment and information events, undertaking initial visits/viability assessments of prospective foster carers, private foster carers and kinship carers, including Social Guardians and those seeking to apply for Child Arrangement Orders.

You will:

• Manage a workload of foster carer, private foster carer and kinship assessments, adhering to clearly defined timescales and working in accordance with the Fostering National Minimum Standards, Fostering Regulations 2011, Care Planning and Case Review Regulations 2013, and Special Guardianship Regulations 2005.
• Initiate and develop close working partnerships with statutory agencies, voluntary and private sector agencies, carers and those with parental responsibility in order to facilitate good outcomes for children and their families.
• Deliver preparation training to carers such as the ‘Skills to Foster’ and presenting to Fostering Panels and when required to the courts.

Our Benefits

We've been working hard to make Tower Hamlets a great place to practice social work. We will help you to develop excellent social work practice, leading to career advancement at your own pace. We are committed to developing excellent practitioners and making Tower Hamlets an employer of choice.

We offer a competitive salary - £44,430 - £55,710 plus travel allowance of £1,280 per annum.

We offer brand new state-of-the-art offices in the heart of the east end with great transport connections. We have fantastic transport links – Tower Hamlets town hall is directly opposite Whitechapel Station, putting all of London within easy reach of the town hall.

Our employees are put on the Local Government Pension Scheme. This is a career average salary scheme, so your pension benefits are guaranteed and do not depend on how investments perform. We pay into the fund on your behalf.

We have a generous annual leave entitlement starting at 29 working days, rising to 33 days with 5+ years' service, in addition to bank holidays and an additional 3 days at Christmas. 

We positively encourage flexible working and work life balance aimed at supporting individual employee requirements within the context of meeting service needs. 

We have a number of money-saving schemes, including a rent deposit scheme (which offers staff an interest free loan to help pay rent deposits) and season ticket loan scheme (interest-free loans to help staff when purchasing travel season tickets).

You will also benefit from:

• A manageable and diverse caseload and good quality reflective supervision
• Coaching and support from our well-established Learning Academy, and the opportunity to practice within our bespoke practice model Better Together, which encompasses restorative, systemic and trauma informed practice principles Core, elective, flexible and specialist learning pathways, as well as clear development pathways for every stage of your social work career
• Opportunities to develop your practice, with a clear framework for career development/leadership programme
• Opportunities for agile/flexible working

How to Apply

We have simplified our application process, please complete a short application on our online application system and upload your CV.

Closing date: This role is closing for applications on the 26th March 2025

Interviews: If successful you will then be invited for a panel interview on the 8th or 11th of April 2025.

Please keep these dates free

For further information regarding the role, please contact: Fostering Recruitment & Assessment – Paula Lyttle at paula.lyttle@towerhamlets.gov.uk

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This post is exempted under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 and as such appointment to this post will be conditional upon the receipt of a satisfactory response to a check of police records via Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS). The Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) helps employers make safer recruitment decisions and prevent unsuitable people from working with vulnerable groups, including children. It replaces the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) and Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA).

Tower Hamlets Councils are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people/vulnerable adults and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment.

Additional Details

Tower Hamlets vision for our borough is that: people are aspirational, independent and have equal access to opportunities; we are a borough that our residents are proud of and love to live in; and we are a dynamic, outcomes-based council using digital innovation and partnership working to respond to the changing needs of our borough. We want people who aspire to our TOWER values: Together; Open; Willing; Excellent; Respect.

Tower Hamlets has a zero-tolerance approach to, and works to eradicate, all forms of discrimination on the basis of race, sex, disability, age, religion or belief, sexual orientation, gender reassignment, marital status, status as a civil partner, gender, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy and maternity and looks to employ a diverse workforce representative of those groups. We recognise that people can also be disadvantaged by their social and economic circumstances, so we will work to eliminate discrimination and disadvantage caused by social class.  

We are a Disability Confident Employer, which means applicants who declare a disability and meet the essential criteria for the post are guaranteed an interview. Care experience has also been adopted by the Council as an additional protected characteristic.

We welcome applicants interested in flexible working arrangements and also applicants who live in the borough.