Our Children's Social Workers

What is it like to work as a Children’s Social Worker for SCC?

Social Work within Children and Young people’s services is a dynamic and adaptive service, which aims to have safer, happier children, and to enable families to create sustainable change for themselves at the heart of everything that we do.

We have multi-agency teams who work in accordance with the principle of one family, one plan, one lead worker to establish a sustained relationship more likely to bring about change.

Our Social Workers are passionate about making a difference and committed to high professional standards and continuous learning, which we encourage and support.

Social Work teams work in one of 13 localities grouped into 5 areas of Suffolk as shown in the map to the right. Each locality has a Child in Need (CIN) team and Early Help team. We have 4 Looked after Children (LAC) teams across county and 4 Fostering and Adoption teams based in Ipswich.

We offer a supportive working environment

In Suffolk, our teams promote practitioner support through formal and informal supervision, management and peer support. We prioritise regular formal 1:1s with staff and offer informal supervision as and when it is needed. Anyone joining the team will benefit from the strong sense of knowledge and support around them.

We have clear routes for progression within the service

Once you join one of our teams, there are plenty of opportunities for you to progress your career. We have established a Social Worker Career progression pathway in Children and Young people’s services which encourages movement between teams and roles (please see the Career Pathway pages for more detailed information).

Social Workers in Children and Young People’s teams are actively encouraged to experience different Social Worker roles through placements, observation and shadowing to enrich their experience and potentially accelerate career progression.

We have adopted Signs of Safety and its framework to support our practitioners

Suffolk Children and Young People’s service have fully adopted Signs of Safety as its practice framework for all children’s services. We have a multi-year transformation programme designed to embed Signs of Safety practice built around learning and systems change - supported by strong, engaged and visible senior leaders. This has been very positively received by our staff, our partners and – most importantly – our families.

Since its implementation our practitioners have fed back that they feel Families are now more engaged, they feel more confident about risk management and feel that it is a real positive way of building of existing good practice and celebrates the skills and abilities of staff.

Making a real difference to Children’s lives

Social Work allows you to make a difference to children’s lives, through supporting, educating and helping families you will improve outcomes for children and create change to allow the most vulnerable in our society to reach their full potential. It might be through support with housing, education, health, through counselling or direct work, Social Workers empower families and safeguard children. Suffolk has a strong track record in good partnership working which we are continually developing.