About the role
Are you a critically reflective social worker looking to take the next step in your career, or wanting to complete a qualification while working? If so, this is an exciting time to join our team! Cambridgeshire County Council’s Learning and Development Team is looking for a part-time Adult Social Care Practice Development Lead (24 hours per week).
You will have extensive experience in social work practice and/or experience as a Social Work Practice Educator (PEPS 2) and/or ASYE assessor, or a willingness to undertake your PEPS qualification. You should understand how professional learning occurs in the workplace and the support elements that can sustain this. An understanding of project planning and quality assurance of assessment is also required, along with strong analytical and communication skills, both verbal and written.
You’ll be joining a welcoming and friendly team with 19 Practice Educators who make up the wider Learning & Development Team consisting of 59 colleagues. We support the learning and development of colleagues through our Learning Management System, which hosts e-learning modules and a booking system for face-to-face and online training. Alongside this, we support staff to complete work-based qualifications.
The post holder will be able to work flexibly from home or from our Stanton House office in Huntingdon, and other offices around the County when the need arises. We are also able to offer flexible working patterns, allowing everyone to effectively blend their work and life commitments. At Cambridgeshire County Council, we know that we work better if we can have flexibility in our working arrangements, and we want to help everyone achieve this, so please talk to us about the working pattern that would most suit you to be successful in this role.
For more information or to chat about this opportunity, please contact Zainab Sulaiman, Acting Adult Social Care L&D Business Partner, at Zainab.Sulaiman@cambridgeshire.gov.uk. Interviews will be taking place via Teams week commencing 16th December.
What will you be doing?
As an Adult Social Care Practice Development Lead, you will be supporting the professional development and assessment of our newly qualified Social Workers as they complete their ASYE (assessed and supported year in employment). You will be responsible for ensuring that the Support and Assessment Agreement meeting, and all review meetings, take place in a timely manner and involve the Newly Qualified Social Worker’s (NQSW) line manager.
This role will also be responsible for ensuring that the NQSW provides relevant practice evidence to demonstrate that they can meet the competence of the Professional Capabilities Framework and the Knowledge and Skills statement. You will undertake reflective supervision as well as complete two out of the three direct observations of practice for the NQSW.
You will have a passion and commitment for supporting and developing NQSWs as they begin their social work career. You will advocate good practice and allow the NQSWs to reflect on their practice, creating a learning environment that enables the NQSW to increase their skills and knowledge as they work with increasingly complex cases.
Additionally, you will be responsible for creating, developing, implementing, and evaluating a wide range of professional learning opportunities across adult services. These opportunities, whether classroom or virtually based training, coaching, one-to-one teaching, mentoring, action learning, or reflective supervision, directly enhance the knowledge, skills, capabilities, and attributes of social care staff across adults’ services.
You will work in partnership with others to develop these opportunities in a collaborative, sustainable, and participatory manner.
About you
You will be an experienced social worker who inspires others and delivers change. You will have a passion and commitment for supporting and developing learners as they begin their social work career. You will advocate good practice and allow practitioners to reflect on their practice creating a learning environment which enables them to increase their skills and knowledge as they work with increasingly complex cases.
Our benefits
We value our colleagues in Cambridgeshire County Council and have developed a number of benefits in addition to the basics like annual leave, sick pay, pension and mileage…
- A comprehensive wellbeing package to cover all aspects of wellbeing, both in and out of work, which can also be accessed by your family
- Buy up to 4 weeks additional annual leave (pro-rata) through our salary sacrifice scheme
- Take your bank holidays flexibly to better suit your personal circumstances
- Make Additional Voluntary Contributions (Shared AVCs) to your pension with tax and National Insurance savings
- Access to development opportunities, apprenticeships and qualified coaches to support your personal and professional growth
- Paid volunteering hours each year so you can make a positive impact on our community during your normal working day
- Access to Peer Support Groups through our IDEAL staff equality, diversity and inclusion network
- Opportunities to nominate and receive Employee Recognition Awards
- An Our Cambs Rewards account, giving you access to in-store and online discounts as well as our Car Lease and Cycle to Work schemes
Take a look at our Employment Benefits Brochure attached to this advert to find out more.
About us
Cambridgeshire is a great place to work and live with a diverse population, an urban centre in Cambridge, historic Isle of Ely, Huntingdon and St Ives as well as more rural landscapes.
Our four values are central to our culture, driving everything we do.
We are proud to serve the diverse communities of Cambridgeshire and want our workforce to be reflective of this diversity, which we firmly believe benefits our colleagues, the organisation and our communities. If you don’t meet every single requirement in the job role but think this could be you, please don’t be put off. We are committed to building a workplace that is compassionate and inclusive as well as diverse, so if you think you could be a good candidate for this role please consider applying and speak to the recruiting manager if you have any questions.
Our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy, along with our employee network 'IDEAL' and self-organised peer support groups help us to foster an inclusive, supportive and safe working environment where people feel valued, respected, and empowered. We collect relevant diversity data for monitoring as part of the recruitment process to understand the diversity of our applicants and monitor any trends throughout the recruitment processes so that we can take meaningful action.
We are proud to be a Disability Confident Employer. We fully support providing reasonable adjustments throughout our recruitment process, as well as when you join us, and we encourage candidates to contact the Hiring Manager, whose details can be found in the advert, to discuss any adjustment needs. Some examples of adjustments could include additional time to complete an assessment or printing a document on pastel coloured paper with larger font size and line spacing. We would value talking about what might be possible to enable you to join us and thrive, so if there is something that would help you to do your best during your journey with us, please get in touch.
Visit our jobs and careers section to find out more about our wide range of learning and development opportunities; apprenticeships; our wellbeing package; staff benefits; our commitment to equality, diversity and Inclusion.
Attached documents
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