Therapeutic Social Worker - LINK Adoption and Family Support Services

Join a growing Therapeutic service supporting children, young people and families.

Link Adoption & Family Support Service provides therapeutic support services for children, young people, and families across the UK. Much of our work is focused within adoption services, supporting adoptive families, children, and young people who have been adopted. We also provide therapeutic services to Special Guardians, kinship carers, and foster carers.

More recently, we have expanded our provision to support wider communities through partnerships with Barnardo's projects, health authorities, charities and voluntary sector organisations. Services are delivered both face-to-face and virtually across the UK.

We are seeking an experienced and passionate Therapeutic Social Worker to join our dynamic therapeutic services team.

This is an exciting opportunity for a qualified Social Worker to play a key role in coordinating therapeutic interventions that make a meaningful difference to the lives of children and families.

Working within a trauma-informed and attachment-focused service, you will manage referrals from initial enquiry through to case closure, ensuring children and families receive timely, appropriate support. You will work collaboratively with therapists, commissioners, local authorities, and families to coordinate high-quality therapeutic interventions and help achieve positive outcomes.

The successful candidate will:

• Lead the assessment, planning and case management of therapeutic support packages, coordinating referrals from enquiry to closure and ensuring children, young people and families receive tailored, child-centred interventions.
• Provide safeguarding leadership, by assessing and managing risk, responding to safeguarding concerns, participating in the safeguarding duty rota and ensuring compliance with safeguarding policies and procedures.
• Offer professional consultation and support to therapists and practitioners, offering guidance on case management, safeguarding, risk management and best practice, contributing to quality assurance and continuous professional development.
• Build and maintain effective partnerships with families, social workers, health professionals and partner agencies, acting as a key point of contact and ensuring collaborative, outcome-focused service delivery.
• Develop and maintain relationships with commissioners and referral partners, providing outcome reports, attending review meetings and identifying opportunities to enhance service delivery and grow referrals.
• Contribute to the growth and development of the service by identifying and delivering new service opportunities, leading improvement initiatives, supporting business development, and deputising for the Practice Manager when required.

This is a hybrid role, primarily home-based with occasional travel for training, team meetings and service-related activities. The successful candidate will become an integral member of our multi-disciplinary team, working collaboratively to deliver high-quality therapeutic services to children, young people and families.

About You

We are looking for someone who has:

• Professional Social Work qualification and registration.
• Experience of safeguarding practice and risk assessment.
• Additional training or qualifications in therapeutic practice, trauma informed approaches, attachment, adoption support, or related areas would be desirable.
• Experience within adoption, fostering, kinship care, Special Guardianship, or related children's services would be desirable.
• Excellent assessment and analytical skills.
• Strong organisational and case management abilities.
• Ability to manage a complex caseload and competing priorities.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Strong relationship-building and stakeholder engagement skills.

If you are passionate about therapeutic social work and want to work in a role that combines safeguarding, relationship-building, service development, and therapeutic coordination, we'd love to hear from you.

Additional Information

You must demonstrate within your application how you currently use, or have previously used, the skills outlined above and within the Job Description and Person Specification. This may be through employment or other relevant experience. Applications should demonstrate an understanding of the context and demands of the service described.

Please note due to the high volume of applications for some posts, this advert might close before the displayed closing date. We recommend that you apply for this role as soon as possible

Pay & Reward Framework

We know that our colleagues go above and beyond in delivering our vital work, driven by their passion and commitment to Barnardo's values . We also know that we can only realise our ambitions and achieve better outcomes for more children, thanks to the talent, hard work and creativity of our people.

For all these reasons, we are committed to a new approach to pay and reward, to ensure it is fair, attractive and progressive, which was rolled out in April 2023. This is a positive change for the charity, and a part of our People & Culture Strategy. It will assist us in supporting colleagues to belong, thrive and grow in their colleague journey at Barnardo's and in time will offer clear routes of progression for colleagues in both their career and their pay.

Whilst the full pay band and salary range is advertised, our approach to starting salaries is to appoint between the minimum to mid-point of the pay band - this ensures that pay steps are available to reward our colleagues annually based on their contribution to excellence and alignment to our values and behaviours. More details on Barnardo's pay framework can be found upon application.

Benefits

Workplace Offer: What it means for you

Our hybrid working initiative is based on trust, flexibility and empowerment. We understand our workplace offer means different things to different people, and we encourage those conversations. This may mean working at one of our stores, services, working at home, in the community, at one of our Collaboration Hubs or depending on the role any combination of these. Please read through the advert carefully to understand the remits of hybrid working that will be specific to the role.

Barnardo's require colleagues to be UK residents, based in the UK and to complete their roles from within the UK (with the exception of colleagues providing Barnardo's services in Jersey and colleagues who live in the Republic of Ireland providing services in Northern Ireland)

• Barnardo's believe in creating equality of opportunity in the workplace and supporting people to manage their work-life balance; we are therefore open to offering flexible working arrangements.
• Annual Leave entitlement for full-time colleagues is 26 days per annum, increasing to 27 days per annum, after 3 years Barnardo's service, 29 days per annum, after 5 years Barnardo's service and 30 days per annum, after 7 years Barnardo's service. Those working less than full time are entitled to the same level of holiday pro rata
• The ability to buy up to another 5 days annual leave via our Buy Your Leave scheme
• A host of family friendly leave options including company Maternity Paternity and Adoption pay; together with all family additional leave options
• Service related sick pay from day 1
• Access to a Group Personal Pension with a matched 4% or 6% contribution from Barnardo's. Ability to pay via salary sacrifice to garner both tax and NI savings on your own contribution
• Death in service cover of 4x annual earnings for all staff contributing to our Group Personal Pension
• Cycle2work scheme
• Interest free season ticket loans
• Discounts and cashback from at high street shops including major supermarkets, cinemas, gyms, leisure/theme parks, holidays and much more via our Benefit Portal
• 20% discount at Barnardo's stores
• Opportunity to purchase a health cash plan to claim towards dental, glasses, therapy etc
• Free access to round the clock employee assistance program for advice and support
• Access to Barnardo's Learning and Development offer

T&C's apply based on contract

About Barnardo's

We are committed to being an inclusive employer and cultivating a culture where everyone can belong and thrive through inclusion and connectivity. We want our workforce to be reflective of the communities we work with, and for equality, diversity and inclusion to be embedded in everything we do. We are a Disability Confident Leader, are progressing our ambition to be an anti-racist organisation with Anti-Racism Commitments and actions in place and have networks for colleagues who are disabled, LGBT+, Black and Minoritised Ethnic and Women. We particularly encourage applications from Black and Minoritised Ethnic and/or disabled candidates who are currently underrepresented in our workforce. For disabled applicants, we offer reasonable adjustments throughout the recruitment process.

Our basis and values