Consultant Social Worker/Advanced Social Work Practitioner

Progress your career as a Consultant Social Worker.

NCC are partnering with Think Ahead – a charity that works with NHS and Local Authority mental health services to strengthen the contribution of social work. We’ll be taking on four trainee social workers (participants) who will join the organisation in August 2023. This is a great opportunity for one experienced social worker to take on the role of Consultant Social Worker/Associate Consultant Social Worker.

In this role you will:

• Join a network of leaders across the country promoting and strengthening mental health social work.
• Lead and develop four talented participants, who are passionate about mental health and social work.
• Develop your skills in practice, supervision, and education.
• Get fully funded CPD training with Middlesex University.

Role

In this full-time secondment position, you’ll manage a “unit” of four participants who are placed in two Living Well teams (Broxtowe and Mansfield). You retain a frontline role including a reduced caseload, oversee participants’ caseloads, acting as their leader and role model. You will provide practice education of outstanding quality. You’ll work with an academic tutor and assess participants’ ability to put social work theories, interventions, and legislation into practice.

Benefits

You will join a group of Consultant Social Workers delivering a prestigious, high-profile initiative across the country (to date, Think Ahead has worked with more than half of NHS Trusts and over a third of Local Authorities). You’ll receive CPD training to develop your expertise in evidence-based interventions and leadership skills. Although preferable, you do not need to be a qualified practice educator as you will receive Practice Educator Professional Standards (PEPS) training stages 1 and 2 with Middlesex University. If you have PEPS 2, you will do one day of PEPS refresher training.

Requirements

You will be a registered social worker with significant experience of working with people with complex mental health needs from a range of adult mental health services. You will also need the enthusiasm, confidence, and authority to inspire others.

We expect Consultant Social Workers to role-model these personal qualities following Nottinghamshire County Council and Think Ahead’s values:

• Leadership: to act as a professional role model, to lead the participant unit in the organisational context and manage day to day operations and provide inclusive learning opportunities.
• Motivation: commitment to undertake practice education and deliver high quality placement learning.
• Adaptability: ability to adapt to competing demands of the role including managing participants' learning experience as well as their own training and development, and organisational roles and responsibilities.
• Relationship-building: establish an effective collaborative working relationship with participants and manage the power and authority in the educator/assessor role skilfully with underpinning principles of equality, diversity and inclusion.
• Communication: ability to provide constructive feedback for participants' practice and development.
• Problem-solving: ability to look at strengths-based approaches to navigate complexity in placement learning.
• Self-awareness: understanding of professional values and ethics and able to advise participants of their rights and actively lead on challenging oppressive or discriminatory situations that may be experienced by participants.

More information

You can also contact Iris Peel (Group Manager) on 07810 853610 or Jacky Ingerson (Principal AMHP Lead) on 07815 478714 if you wish to discuss this role further.                   .

You can also read about the experiences of some of Think Ahead’s current Consultant Social Workers on Community Care and Think Ahead’s website. The also provides an overview of the organisation and the role for those not familiar with Think Ahead.