Senior Practitioner-Team Around the Child

Organisation: Leicestershire County Council

Work Location: County Hall Room 600 Glenfield Leicestershire LE3 8RS

Worker Category: Hybrid Worker- working at home/in the community and within the office

Salary: per annum (Pro rata for part time) Plus market premium

Working Hours:22.5 hours- Monday-Wednesday (can be flexible with days)

Contract Type: Permanent

Closing Date: 2nd November 2025

Interview Date(s): 10th November 2025

Are you passionate about working with foster carers and helping to improve the outcomes for our children in care

Are you interested in supporting the well-being of foster carers and their children

Do you want to work within a busy and supportive team which is committed to ensuring that our children in care receive a high standard of care and our foster carers feel well supported and have the necessary skills to care for children

If so this role is for you:-

About the Role

We are looking to recruit a senior practitioner supervising social worker to join our busy team which focusses on supporting mainstream foster carers to care for our looked after children. You must be passionate about working directly with foster carers to ensure that they have the necessary skills to care for children that have experienced trauma and you must have a keen interest in working with the whole fostering household including birth children. We encourage all of our foster carers to work in a trauma informed and therapeutic manner so you need to be able to support not only your own learning but also the foster carers to ensure that these principles are applied within the foster home.

As a supervising social worker you will be responsible for the fostering household ensuring that the statutory regulations and requirements are met. It will be within your role to provide regular supervision to foster carers undertake annual reviews and work collaboratively with other professionals both within and external to the addition you will work within the fostering duty team to ensure that children are matched to suitable foster homes with carers that have the skills to meet their needs. There will be an expectation that you attend weekly duty meetings and work on duty as required.

In addition you will be expected to support the team manager in managing the operational aspects of the team such as chairing meetings supervising support workers facilitating skills to foster training and being the lead worker for our children who foster scheme in addition to other tasks.

As a team we hold a number of events throughout the year and it will be part of your role to help to arrange and facilitate these some of which are outside of the normal office hours.

The role is 22.5 hours per week working Monday- Wednesday (can be flexible with days) and there is 1 permanent post available.

A DBS enhanced check for a regulated activity is required for this post.

For information on our approach to the recruitment of ex-offenders please see our policy statement.

About You

To apply for this post you must respond to and evidence the following 7 essential criteria within your personal statement.

• Have a Social Work degree or equivalent e.g. CQSW DipSW (with specialism in childrens services) with evidence of continuing professional development (ASYE pass as a minimum).
• Post-qualification experience of working with children and families and experience of statutory childcare social work including safeguarding child protection and care proceedings.
• Have experience of working with service users from ethnic minorities and those who have a protected characteristic.
• Demonstrate your continuing professional development including self-development.
• Experience of working within a fostering service/with foster carers and Children in Care alongside a working knowledge of Fostering Regulations and National Minimum Standards
• The ability to communicate clearly and accurately both orally and in writing with a wide range of people including representatives from other agencies using skills of negotiation and addition you must have the ability to prioritise effectively across a wide range of competing demands to meet deadlines.
• The ability to use information technology applications e.g. Microsoft Outlook Word and database applications as relevant to the department.

You must also have an understanding of and commitment toequality diversity and inclusion.

In addition we also expect you to shareour commitment to our valuesand will ask you to evidence when you have demonstrated them as part of the selection process.

Reasonable adjustments will be considered for applicants with a disability.

Interested in Flexible Working

We are keen to support employees to balance their working life with other commitments. Therefore wherever possible we will consider working arrangements that suit an individuals personal circumstances whilst still meeting the needs of the Council. If you would like to discuss the possible flexible working options that might be applicable to this role please contact the person named below. This may include requests for term-time working part-time hours compressed hours flexible start and finish times home/remote working etc.

Every role within the Council has a defined working style which determines where they can work. The worker category applicable to this post is detailed in the above advert. You can find out more about our worker categories in the Our Working Stylespage on our career site.

For more information or an informal discussionplease contact:

Rachael Young- Team Manager Team Around the Child

Telephone:0

Email:

How to Apply

Leicestershire County Council is an inclusive organisation which is on a journey to embed and celebrate equality diversity and inclusion at every level. We warmly welcome and encourage applications from people of all backgrounds as having a diverse workforce with different perspectives and ideas is fundamental to our values and enriches the services we offer our communities. We particularly welcome applicants from Ethnically Diverse and LGBTQ communities and people with disabilities to create a balanced workforce and one that reflects the communities we serve. Applicants with a disability who meet the criteria listed in the About You section above will be offered an interview under the Disability Confident Employer Scheme.

To apply for this job please click on the apply button. You will need to upload a supporting statement as part of your application which explains how you meet the criteria listed in the About You section above. For more information see the How to Applysection on our career site.

We reserve the right to close this vacancy early if we receive sufficient applications for the role. Therefore if you are interested please submit your application as early as possible.

If you have any technical issues when trying to apply for this post or you want to request an application pack in an alternative format please contact our Employee Service Centre by telephoning0(select option 2) or raising a ticket via our online portal: applying for this post you agree to ourTerms and Conditions.