Court Progression Officer Internal

At the London Borough of Barnet we are ambitious for our children and families. We are committed to delivering an integrated childcentred and relational approach to Family Help and safeguarding focused on improving outcomes through excellent practice strong partnerships and a culture that values innovation learning and reflective leadership.

The Court Progression Officer provides strategic oversight coordination and professional leadership for all court proceedings involving Childrens Social Care including Public Law Outline (PLO) pre proceedings and care proceedings. The post holder exercises professional authority across the service to direct and influence practice ensuring that all court work meets high standards of quality timeliness and compliance.

The role works collaboratively across all social work services Legal Services and partner agencies while holding practitioners and managers to account for delivering effective child focused and legally robust court work in line with statutory requirements and court expectations.

The post holder acts as a central point of expertise assurance and practice leadership providing oversight challenge and direction to practitioners and managers and supporting senior leadership to maintain strong governance of court and PLO activity across Family Services. This includes driving improvement in case progression reducing delay strengthening practice quality and enhancing the Local Authoritys interface with the courts.

You will be a qualified and registered social worker with a minimum of 3 years post qualified experience in statutory childrens social care.

You will:

• Have substantial experience of working within care proceedings including Public Law Outline (PLO) interim and final orders.

• Have strong knowledge of care and permanence planning with the ability to promote high quality evidence-based planning for children.

• Have considerable post-qualifying direct experience in adoption work.

• Have demonstrable experience of improving or supporting case progression and reducing delay in court proceedings.
• Have experience of providing advice consultation or professional challenge to social workers and managers.
• Have experience of joint working with Legal Services CAFCASS and partner agencies.
• Be able to maintain oversight of complex high volume information and identify risk drift or delay.
• Be able to deliver practice guidance briefings or learning sessions.