Adoption Social Worker

Department: Children’s Services

Terms and Conditions: A variety of contracts available

Shortlisting date: Week commencing 19th June 2023

Interview date: Week commencing 26th June 2023

Are you passionate about achieving permanence for children through adoption? Do you strive to keep children central to your social work practice and achieve the best possible outcomes for every child? If so, we would love to hear from you.

Adoption Now is the Regional Adoption Agency for Blackburn with Darwen, Bolton, Bury, Rochdale, Oldham and Tameside, and we are currently looking for experienced social workers to join our service and work with our existing dedicated staff.

The service is made up of three teams:

Care Planning and Family Finding

We ensure that opportunities for Early Permanence are achieved alongside our colleagues who are committed to ensuring that all permanence options are explored as early as possible. We track children through court proceedings, begin to family find for them before take over case responsibility. We co-work through all processes with local authority colleagues and this helps our Social Workers develop strong positive relationships with children to find them the best possible families. These positive relationships enable us to get to know birth families and adopters; supporting them and ensuring that the child has all of the information they need for their future identity.

Recruitment and Assessment

We believe that the needs of our children are best met when placed with adopters who we have recruited and assessed to help create a seamless journey for both adopters and children. Social Workers support families through assessments, retaining case responsibility for the adopters post approval. Social Workers therefore build strong and supportive relationships with our adopters which strengthens the family finding and matching process; helping families and children adjust to placements and settled into their new lives.

Adoption Support

Our Adoption Support Specialists undertake consultations early to ensure the needs of the child/ren can be met. The same team of dedicated workers remain involved pre and post adoption order to provide bespoke support by working directly with the family, commissioning experts to deliver therapeutic work and hosting training and support events open to all.

All three teams work closely together and strive to deliver the highest quality of service for our children, birth families, and adopters. In addition to standard case work, there are opportunities across all of the teams to be involved in working groups, delivering training, and supporting adopter/adoptee events.

If you join our service you would have the advantage of receiving regular bespoke training both in person and online. You will benefit from 31 days annual leave plus bank holidays, payment of your Social Work England membership, subsidised parking at your main office base, travel and parking expenses plus a comprehensive employee benefit scheme which includes shopping discounts and a car lease/hire purchase scheme.

We currently have a number of vacancies with a variety of hours available across the service. We are happy to discuss the roles in more detail; please call Katrina Williams on 07741 840430 or email Katrina.Williams@adoptionnow.org.uk

What our employees say about working for us:

‘The management support I have received is amongst the best I have ever experienced.’ JB

‘I love being involved in seeing really positive outcomes for children after all of the trauma they have experienced, and being part of a team that is passionate about and dedicated to this.’ KW

You can also find out more information and book onto our online Jobs Fair taking place on 1st June by visiting https://adoptionnow.org.uk/

Please note that your CV must evidence the requirements of the role profile with a supporting statement outlining how you meet the key requirements.