Pro Social Partners
CONSULTANT SOCIAL WORKER - WILLOW PROGRAMME
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Consultant Social Worker - Willow Programme
Consultant Social Worker – Willow Programme (Permanent)
Location: London Borough of Barking and Dagenham (Hybrid working available)
Salary: £52,194
Contract: Permanent
Pro Social Partners are proud to be working in partnership with the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham to recruit a Consultant Social Worker to lead their new Willow Programme.
The Willow Programme is being built from scratch to support women who have had a child removed from their care. It exists to break one of the most familiar and most costly patterns in children's social care, where a woman loses a child through care proceedings, receives no support afterwards, becomes pregnant again within a year or two and the whole cycle repeats. Some women go through it four, five or six times. Willow offers intensive, trauma-informed and relationship-based support so that those women can stabilise their lives, work through the trauma of the removal and, wherever possible, avoid another removal. If you know Pause, Break the Cycle or Positive Choices, you will recognise the model straight away. The difference here is that Barking and Dagenham are building theirs in-house, sitting inside Children's Services rather than commissioning it out.
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This is a genuine hybrid of leadership and practice. The team is small and senior, made up of this post leading two Willow Practitioners, and because the service does not exist yet you will be designing it rather than inheriting it.
The Role
As Consultant Social Worker for the Willow Programme, you will:
- Design the service from the ground up, including the practice model, the processes and the referral routes.
- Supervise, line manage and develop the two Willow Practitioners, and help recruit them into post.
- Hold a small caseload of your own, working directly with the women the service supports.
- Build the partnerships the model depends on, across Children's Services teams, health, adult services including substance misuse, mental health and domestic abuse, alongside community organisations.
- Generate the referrals into the service and wrap the right support around each woman.
- Evidence the impact of the service through data, quality assurance and outcome reporting, so that Willow can justify its place and its funding.
About You
You will be a senior practitioner with:
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- A recognised Social Work qualification and current Social Work England registration.
- Significant children's social care experience, specifically in safeguarding and court work, with a thorough understanding of care proceedings.
- Experience of supervising and developing other social workers, gained as a senior practitioner, assistant team manager or similar.
- A genuine grasp of trauma-informed and relationship-based practice rather than the language around it.
- Confidence working with data and performance information.
- The appetite to build something new rather than run something that already exists.
Why Barking and Dagenham?
- A senior salary of £52,194 with the scope to stay in direct practice.
- The rare chance to design a service from scratch and own how it works.
- A model with a strong national evidence base behind it, delivered in-house rather than commissioned.
- Supportive leadership and a strong culture of reflective supervision.
- Hybrid working arrangements and a genuine commitment to work–life balance.
Location: Barking | Salary: £52194 per year | Job type: Permanent | Posted: 24/08/2026
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