Senior Practitioner - Ref: CH04925
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Senior Practitioner - Aspiring Futures (Exploitation Team) - Ref: CH04925
G11 - £47,754 - £52,805 (SCP 38-43)
An exciting opportunity has arisen for the appointment of a permanent Senior Practitioner to join the Aspiring Futures Team (Exploitation).
As a Senior Practitioner the Aspiring Futures team, you would have case holding responsibility for some of our exploited young people, completing Our Family assessments, direct work and intervention, child protection enquiries and proactively working with the young person, their families and wider partnership to disrupt exploitation and reduce risk of harm. You will support the learning and development of practitioners within the team and deputise for the Team Manager and Assistant Team manager with tasks such as supporting the chairing of meetings. You will work alongside Aspiring Futures Practitioners, Street Teams, Youth Workers from the Adolescent hub, and wider partners, to support change and better outcomes for young people who are missing or exploited.
In addition to case holding, the successful candidate will lead on a project relating to the mapping and deeper understanding of our Children in Care who go missing, what happens for them when they are missing, mapping of perpetrators and an understanding of the partnership activity including prevention, disruption and response. This will support both Strategic and Operational work to strengthen the wider offer to our Children in Care.
The Role
As a Senior Practitioner within the Aspiring Futures team, you will work alongside young people to understand their needs and lived experiences in relation to exploitation and contextual safeguarding, whilst considering and understanding wider vulnerabilities and protective factors. You will use context weighting to support in identifying needs relating to exploitation and contextual safeguarding, enabling the practitioner to gain a greater understanding of how the young person interacts with the wider contexts around them and what risks this may pose to them, which supports in identifying and reducing the risk of exploitation for young people.
The Aspiring Futures Team are Co-located with Exploitation police and the Youth Justice Service, and virtually connected to wider Exploitation hub partners such at Walsall Street Teams, The Beacon (substance misuse support), Community Safety Partnership, Adult Social Care, Education Inclusion Hub, which supports professional working relationships with partners and with families, enabling better coordinated help and support for the young person and their families.
Participation and partnership working with the young person and their families is key within the work of the Aspiring Futures team, ensuring time is taken to build a positive relationship with the young person and their family and fully involve them in their safety planning and decision making. The team adopt a relational and systemic approach to working with young people and their families, alongside motivational interviewing techniques have supported to enable young people to feel listened to and support them to recognise the exploitation they are experiencing.
A successful candidate will receive training in Systemic Family Practice, motivational interviewing and trauma informed practice.
As a Senior Practitioner within Aspiring futures, you will support with the learning and development of practitioners within the team, including some co-working and engagement in reflective conversations. This will include some supervision and practice development of student social workers and ASYE social workers where required.
You will support and deputise for the Team Manager and Assistant team manager, providing advice and guidance to practitioners, support team development and wider connectivity and networking across the service, and support with chairing arrangements for daily missing and exploitation triage, MACE meetings and strategy meetings as required.
The successful candidate will lead on a project relating to the mapping and deeper understanding of our Children in Care who go missing, what happens for them when they are missing, mapping of perpetrators and an understanding of the partnership activity including prevention, disruption and response. This will support both Strategic and Operational work to strengthen the wider offer to our Children in Care.
If you are passionate about supporting young people who are experiencing exploitation and missing episodes, and their families and want to work as part of a friendly team in an OFSTED-rated 'Outstanding' local authority, committed to ongoing learning where you will receive good supervision and training, please get in touch for an informal discussion with Rebecca Warren, Group Manager, Help and Support Rebecca.warren@walsall.gov.uk or 01922 653476.
Our Offer in Walsall
Walsall is a great place to work. We strive to provide the best services and outcomes to our children, young people and families.
To provide the right conditions for you, we are committed to manageable workloads, high support from managers, essential paperwork only, enabling technologies, and all social workers will receive training in Systemic Family Practice.
Wellbeing is at the heart of our work. We offer specialised clinical supervision, a 9-day fortnight to support work/life balance, hybrid and flexible working and specialist employee assistance and therapeutic support when it is needed. We know we need to make social work a career people want to stay in, and we have a comprehensive career development offer including specialist training.
We are committed to anti-discrimination and equality and to developing a workforce that reflects the communities we service.
Salary Scale G11 - £47,754 - £52,805(+10% Retention Payments after 2 years, increasing at 4 and 6 years)
View Job Description and Employee Specification
Important note: When completing your online application form, you will be asked to enter supporting information. You must enter a detailed supporting information statement describing how your skills, abilities and experience meet the specific criteria included in the employee specification. If you do not include a supporting information statement, you will not be shortlisted. Please also ensure that you complete the work history and qualifications sections of your application form. Please do not add a CV as we do not accept them. Please see our Information for Applicants leaflet for further information.
We kindly request that recruitment agencies do not contact us regarding this job vacancy. We are not accepting agency applications or referrals at this time.
Closing date for application is Friday 22 nd August, with interviews provisionally taking place 28 th and 29 th August 2025. (Please note applicant must be social work qualified and registered with Social Work England. Applications submitted without a supporting statement will not be accepted)