Gloucestershire County Council
Family Help Social Worker
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Job Title: Family Help Social Worker
Job Location: Forest of Dean, Cotswolds, & Stroud
Salary: £39,152 - £47,181 per annum
Hours per Week: 37.00
Contract Type: Permanent
Closing Date: 06/09/2026
Job Requisition Number: 14768
This post is open to job share
At Gloucestershire, we are transforming the way we support children, young people and families through our Family Help approach. We are looking for passionate and dedicated Social Workers who want to work in supportive, collaborative multi-agency teams to create lasting change and help children thrive safely within their communities.
This is an exciting opportunity to be part of a progressive service that focuses on building relationships, delivering early support and achieving better outcomes for children and families.
We are currently recruiting for Family Help Social Workers and Family Help Senior Social Workers to join our locality Family Help teams. Gloucestershire covers six localities and we currently have vacancies in Forest of Dean, Cotswolds, & Stroud.
About us
For all your hard work, you will receive the following:
- Salary: between £39,152 - £40,777 per annum for a Family Help Social Worker or between £41,771 - £47,181 per annum for a Family Help Senior Social Worker subject to experience
- Annual retention payment: £2,000*
- Welcome payment: £4,000*
- Relocation package: up to £8,000
- Flexible and agile working opportunities
- Annual leave: 25.5 days rising to 30.5 days after 5 years continuous service
- Option to purchase additional leave: 10 days per year (pro rata for part-time staff)
- Family friendly policies and benefits
- Supportive and positive working environment with regular, robust supervision
- Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS)
- Employee Assistance Programme (EAP): free, confidential, counselling and advice for employees, 24 hours a day, online and by phone
- In-house Occupational Health service
- Employee discount scheme
- Cycle to Work scheme
- Links to employee networks such as Prism (LGBT+) and the Young Employees Network
- Career development and qualification opportunities
- Access to our Social Work Academy
- Paid SWE registration renewal
Right child, right support, right time, every time
We work together to support families and communities to give every child the best chance of a happy and rewarding life, especially those who need more help.
We have ambitious improvement and transformation plans to create the optimum conditions within which our staff can make a real difference and improve outcomes for children.
We aim for the same Family Help Social Worker to support children and their families from the front door until permanence is achieved either through positive change and the child remaining with their parent/s or legal permanence being secured either within the family or outside of the family.
We are a local authority adopting, and training all colleagues in, systemic social work practice. If you would like to join an authority that takes a relational approach to working with families and focuses on what needs to change in the system around a child and family to enable children to thrive, then consider a role with GCC.
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Our team structures are designed to ensure there is the right level of support available to staff and that caseloads are kept at a manageable level with a Family Help Team Manager, two Family Help Team Leaders and 12 Family Help Social Workers and Family Help Leads making up each team’s full complement of staff. Each team is linked to a local Children’s Centre offering meaningful, cohesive services which reach into our community.
We believe families receive the best support when we work as a system. We have invested in a range of specialist services - all delivered in our localities - as we aim to get rid of internal referral forms and work collaboratively together to respond to need. The teams are supported with access to our innovative Intensive Intervention Teams, Multi-Agency Child Protection Teams, Harm outside the Home Hubs, and Early Intervention and Community Teams. This includes parenting practitioners, family group conference practitioners, intensive edge of care family support workers, adolescent support workers, adult employment practitioners, mental health providers, IDVAs and more.
We need resilient, driven individuals who will play their part in making our vision for Children’s Services a success. You will be joining an authority with a strong set of values that underpin the work we do: Accountability, Empowerment, Excellence, Integrity and Respect.
About you
As a Family Help Social Worker, you will be instrumental in delivering a first-class service to ensure the best outcomes for the children and young people of Gloucestershire. Through building collaborative, respectful relationships with colleagues within the service and partner agencies you will ensure we are able to provide support and protection for children and young people in need and at risk.
As well as your experience as a frontline social worker, there are some things we require of you to be successfully appointed to this post:
- Social Work England registration
- A recognised qualification in Social Work
- To have passed your Assessed and Supported Year in Employment (ASYE) if you qualified after 2012
- To meet the requirements of the Children’s Social Care National Framework
- A full driving licence and willingness to drive
- DBS clearance (Enhanced Adults and Children’s)
If you would like to find out more about our Children's Service please take a look here: Children's Social Care Careers | Gloucestershire County Council
Please note, all our welcome payments and retention payments are non-contractual, pro rata for part-time staff and subject to National Insurance and tax deductions. We reserve the right to close an advertisement earlier than the stated closing date if we receive a suitable amount of applications or fill the vacancy/vacancies.
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The council will consider sponsorship for this role, in line with Home Office regulations and subject to satisfactory pre-employment checks.
If you are an Internal applicant and consider yourself to have a disability* as per the Equality Act (2010), please declare this in an email to CSWrecruitment@gloucestershire.gov.uk, as this is NOT currently covered in the application due to a technical error. This is to enable you to be considered for a guaranteed interview under our Disability Confident pledge if you meet all essential shortlisting criteria. It also enables the recruiting manager to arrange any reasonable adjustments you may need during the interview process.
A disability is defined as: a physical or mental impairment, which has a substantial and long-term (more than 12 months) adverse effect on a person’s ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities.
Under the terms of our Safer Recruitment Policy, if you are invited to interview, we will take up safeguarding references prior to your interview to understand your suitability to work with vulnerable children. These references will then be discussed in your interview. Please give details of at least two referees, one of whom must be your present and/or last employer and the other from a previous employer(s). These will need to cover the last three years of employment/education. In the case of applicants leaving full time education or not having worked since doing so, the Head of School, College or University should be one of the named referees. We do not accept references from friends or family members or workplace colleagues (who are not more senior). To ensure we process your application in a speedy and efficient way, we will contact your referees by DocuSign. Where appropriate, please inform them of your application.
Additional Information
To access the Job Profile for this role, please follow the link below:
This position is subject to a DBS check.
Gloucestershire County Council is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people or vulnerable adults and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment.
We want to be an employer of choice, attracting and retaining excellent people to work for us, so that we can best serve all of Gloucestershire’s diverse communities. Our promise to you is that we will provide an inclusive and supportive working environment that enables you to bring your whole self to work and realise your full potential.
It is a legal requirement, under the Immigration Act 2016, that anyone appointed to a ‘customer facing role’ must be able to demonstrate an ability to fulfil all spoken aspects of the role with confidence in fluent English.
Hybrid working arrangements are available for the majority of our roles, giving teams the opportunity to work in a way that suits them, balancing service need and individual choice, with a mix of both remote and office working.
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