Job description

About

We are seeking an experienced manager with a minimum of four years' supervisory experience in children’s social care, including working with and managing services for children with disabilities, to join our Children’s Specialist Support Team and help make a lasting difference in the lives of children and young people.

About you…
You will need to be a registered Social Worker with Social Work England and have significant post qualifying experience working with children and families in the statutory sector.

Please see our main advert for full details.

About the team…
See our main advert for full details.

Key responsibilities...
To manage the delivery and performance of the Children’s Specialist Support Team, including retention and recruitment; workload allocation and management; induction; supervision and development of staff; disciplinary and capability performance management and succession planning.
To lead within a secure base model and to support and encourage a culture where good social work practice can flourish. Providing a secure physical and psychological base from which to work safely and effectively thus reducing the risk of harm to children and increase and improve their long-term outcomes.
To ensure the provision of statutory functions are discharged effectively with the specific aim of reducing immediate and emerging risk and escalating the needs of the children to provide the best possible opportunities for all ages and stages of life.
To promote and support the council’s policies and procedures for safeguarding, ensuring children are at the centre of all decisions, and the social model of disability is respected in all work.
To ensure arrangements for regular engagement andparticipation with children and young people and parents and carers, by all staff within the service, and to lead on investigations and response to complaints from service users, relatives and carers.
To lead on strategy discussions, Child in Need meetings, professional meetings and other forums, working together with partner agencies to conclude with safe and proportionate threshold decision and planning.
To undertake regular reviews of, and track, performance data completing audits and contributing to audit programmes and frameworks.
To develop and maintain effective internal and external working relationships, ensuring a positive working culture within the team, and working collaboratively with multi-agency partners, including chairing reviews, planning meetings, strategy discussions and other professional and network meetings.
Providing high quality, reflective supervision (in line with the supervision policy) including providing feedback and analysis of performance.
To develop and maintain accurate case records and comply with the department's policies, procedures and guidelines including data protection and GDPR.

Our benefits…
See our main advert for our full list of benefits.

Our values...
See our main advert for our values.

Reasonable adjustments...
See our main advert for our adjustments.

Interview date...
Interviews will be held on Thursday 12th June 2025.

Interviews will be conducted in person, providing candidates with the chance to personally meet the team and experience our work environment.

We will be reviewing applications regularly and reserve the right to close the advert early if suitable candidates are identified. To avoid disappointment, you are advised to submit your application as soon as possible.

Please note AI is prohibited during the interview, any candidate using AI will be withdrawn from consideration.

Want to ask us a question?
For an informal discussion or to ask any questions about this role, please contact:

Lou Richer - Head of Service, Specialist Family Safeguarding

Lou.Richer@bracknell-forest.gov.uk

Helen Gore - Principal Social Worker

Helen.gore@bracknell-forest.gov.uk

At Bracknell Forest we champion equality, diversity and inclusion. At Bracknell Forest Council, we are always learning, ambition and inclusive. Please see our candidate pack for more details.

Bracknell Forest Council is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults. We expect everyone employed with us to share this commitment. All successful candidates for this role will be subject to a DBS (Disclosure & Barring Service) check as part of our pre-employment checks process.

Candidates should be able to demonstrate experience of working within the current Social Care System and Framework.

Social Work England registration fees can be claimed back from the Council.

We can only accept applications from candidates currently residing in the UK.

Candidates currently residing in the UK who require sponsorship to work are encouraged to assess their eligibility for a Certificate of Sponsorship (CoS) based on the relevant criteria. Please be aware that sponsorship availability varies and is subject to eligibility requirements and budget limitations. As a result, we cannot guarantee sponsorship for all roles and will evaluate sponsorship requests on a case-by-case basis.

No agencies please.

Proud member of the Disability Confident employer scheme

Disability Confident

About Disability Confident

A Disability Confident employer will generally offer an interview to any applicant that declares they have a disability and meets the minimum criteria for the job as defined by the employer. It is important to note that in certain recruitment situations such as high-volume, seasonal and high-peak times, the employer may wish to limit the overall numbers of interviews offered to both disabled people and non-disabled people. For more details please go to Disability Confident.