Consultant Social Workers
£40,327 - £46,099
Relocation package available
Reclaiming Social Work
Aberdeen City Council is the first local authority in Scotland to fully implement the Reclaiming Social Work model, a whole system redesign of social work services for families in need across the city and is aimed at reducing the number of children in care and delivering more positive outcomes for children and families.
Bernadette Oxley, Head of Children’s Social Work, Aberdeen City Council, believes that social workers have a crucial role in helping and supporting families in need and wants to make sure that they are free to focus on this work.
“This includes the way we work with each other, our partners and most importantly our families in need. We are cutting bureaucracy and redesigning our services to enable staff to work systemically and collaboratively in small Social Work Units.”
The service has undergone a significant restructure, moving from a traditional team system with individual social workers managed by a team manager to small units with a small number of staff working with a number of children and families each led by a consultant social worker. The first staff moved to the first Units in February 2016. Significant investment has also been made in providing additional training in systemic practice for staff ahead of the move to the new units and this is ongoing. The space to have weekly Unit meetings has been welcomed as it allows time to work in a planned systemic way with families experiencing a more therapeutic intervention and being helped to manage and plan their own actions.
Feedback from families supported by the early Units has been extremely positive. Adam Keenan, Consultant Social Worker, Aberdeen City Council said “Reclaiming Social Work encompasses a fundamental change to the way social work services are delivered to our service users, moving away from the top-down, traditional model, which by design led to the isolation and over-burdening of social workers and team managers.”
He added “As Consultant Social Worker in a Social Work Unit I am now involved in the practice of participating in work with families. And I have found that these families tend to respond more favourably to our new approach, leading to better levels of engagement.”
- Reclaiming Social Work – Leaflet 1
- Reclaiming Social Work – Leaflet 2
- Reclaiming Social Work – Leaflet 3
- Reclaiming Social Work – Leaflet 4
The Role
The Consultant Social Worker will lead a group of social work and clinical practitioners, and work directly with children and families, leading case management and working within a systemic framework to provide a comprehensive and effective integrated social work service. They will be fully accountable for all work undertaken in a timely manner for children and families allocated to the Social Work Unit. This will be achieved by assessing need, planning and delivering focused intervention to safeguard children and by developing appropriate plans for children and families to promote positive outcomes.
Further information on the role can be found as follows