CHILDREN FIRST AND AT THE HEART OF ALL WE DO
DUDLEY CHILDREN'S SOCIAL CARE
Welcome to our recruitment site for
Children’s social care vacancies in Dudley
FAMILY
SOLUTIONS
CHILDREN & FAMILIES, SAFEGUARDING & SUPPORT
CHILDREN IN CARE & PLACEMENT RESOURCES
SAFEGUARDING & REVIEW SERVICE
Councillor
Ruth Buttery
Cabinet lead for Children’s Services, Dudley Council
WOULD YOU LIKE TO JOIN A COUNCIL
THAT ACTIVELY SUPPORTS STAFF AND IS
FORGING A FUTURE FOR ALL?
Our vision is for Dudley to be a wonderful place for children and young people to grow up. We are Child Friendly Dudley where we understand that all partners and people need to work together to create an environment where children can flourish – ‘it takes a village to
raise a child’. In Children’s Services our mission is children first and at the heart of all we do.
Our values are:
• Valuing family life
• Good education for all
• Protection from harm
• Embracing diversity
We recognise the importance of investing in our workforce and are committed to giving you the opportunity to develop your knowledge and skills through our learning and development offer provided by our innovative and Ofsted-recognised Centre for Professional Practice
If you want to be part of a forward thinking, dynamic children’s service, which cares for and actively supports its staff and really does want to work together with its workforce to change children and families lives for the better, then please do take a look at our current roles and vacancies on offer.
We want to give children the best start in life
Social Worker
Catherine Driscoll
Director for Children’s Services, Dudley Council
Dudley is an ambitious local authority and a great place to develop your career.
Through our ‘Child Friendly Dudley’ agenda we have the highest ambitions for our children and young people. Relationships are key to our values and beliefs, founded on the principles of Restorative Practice which underpins our practice framework.
It is an exciting time to join Dudley Children’s Services as we implement the Family Safeguarding Model which originated in 2015 in Hertfordshire and has since been implemented in Local Authorities across England as a result of it’s successful outcomes for safeguarding children.
Family Safeguarding is a strengths-based, whole-family approach to child protection; it is a whole-systems and whole-family reform, bringing together all of the professionals working with the family into one-multi-disciplinary team.
Through the Family Safeguarding model, the focus of child protection has shifted from monitoring compliance to engaging with families in a strengths-based way and producing meaningful change through Motivational Interviewing, a client-centred therapeutic style designed to harness motivation and enhance readiness for change. There is monthly group case supervision which includes all the professionals working with the family to review progress and next steps. Additionally, each team member has monthly clinical supervision with a team leader from their own professional background. This approach facilitates shared and informed decision-making about whether children are being harmed, and about what help and support to provide to the family.
The model also utilises a shared ‘electronic workbook’ to provide a succinct record of the case, and allow for easier information sharing between agencies, thus reducing the amount of time spent recording and entering information; time which can be instead spent on direct work with families.
In Dudley we are implementing both Family Safeguarding services and Adolescent Safeguarding Teams. The Adolescent Safeguarding Service will harness all the principles of the family safeguarding model; using motivational interviewing to work with families and young people to achieve change, group supervision, multi-disciplinary working and use of the electronic workbook. The Adolescent Teams will predominantly work with families where the children are older and/or where the risks are more evident in the community rather than within their own family. This builds on the solution focused ethos of working with families, leading to better participation, that the Family Safeguarding model achieves for families with younger children.
The Family Safeguarding and Adolescent Safeguarding approach connects with our framework of Restorative Practice, which is a value-based relational way of being, that is needs-led and strengths focused. It embodies a set of core beliefs, principles and behaviours that promote a way of being with people that actively and explicitly promotes change by working WITH people on a high challenge, high support basis.
Restorative practice is important to us in Dudley and lies at the heart of our ambition to be ‘Child Friendly Dudley’ providing us with an overarching framework for practice and basis for our organisational culture.