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
FRONT DOOR AND PARTNERSHIPS
FAMILY / ADOLESCENT SAFEGUARDING
THROUGH CARE
SAFEGUARDING & QUALITY ASSURANCE
WOULD YOU LIKE TO JOIN A COUNCIL
THAT ACTIVELY SUPPORTS STAFF AND IS
FORGING A FUTURE FOR ALL?
Through the Dudley Council Plan, we have set our aspiration to be a community council which delivers services in partnership and helps communities to help themselves. The 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:
• Accountability
• Determination
• Empowerment and respect
• Excellence
• Simplicity
• Working Together
We recognise the importance of investing in our workforce and are committed to supporting you to develop your knowledge and skills through our comprehensive 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 works together with its workforce to change the lives of children and families for the better, then please take a look at our current roles and vacancies on offer.
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Councillor David Stanley
Cabinet member for Children and Young People
Having a positive impact on children is fantastic
Social Worker
Karen Graham
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. Our Practice Framework is founded on the fundamental idea that families and their networks are of primary importance, and the most important influence on improving outcomes for children. If we work with families in relational ways, keeping children at the heart of decisions that affect them, we can enable families to solve their own problems earlier and more effectively, providing the right amount of support for the right children for the right amount of time, ensuring that intervention in family life only occurs when necessary.
Our Family Safeguarding Model originated 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 multi-disciplinary supervision which includes all the professionals working with the family to review progress and next steps. This approach facilitates shared and informed decision-making about whether children are being harmed, and the help and support to provide to families.
The model also utilises a shared ‘workbook’ to provide a succinct record of a child's case, allowing easier information-sharing between agencies, thus reducing the amount of time spent recording and entering information. This is time which can be instead spent on direct work with families, completing the Family Programme.
In Dudley we have implemented both Family Safeguarding and Adolescent Safeguarding Teams. The Adolescent Safeguarding Service harnesses all the principles of the Family Safeguarding model. The Adolescent Teams 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.
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. This 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.