West Sussex County Council

Here at West Sussex County Council, we are ambitious for our children and our workforce and have a shared vision to put ‘children first’. This is at the heart of everything we do to support our children, young people and families.

Our teams

We offer small teams of Social Workers managed by a Team Manager, supported by Advanced Social Workers and Child and Family Workers embedded in the service. Alongside this we provide additional flexible administrative support with Coordinators in each team. Our Children’s Social Care service is made up of the following teams:

- Assessment and Intervention Team – based in Crawley, Bognor Regis and Worthing this fast paced, busy and supportive team assess and work with children and families and will intervene where children need support, to provide help at an earlier stage.
- Family Safeguarding Team – based in Chichester, Bognor Regis, Worthing, Horsham, Crawley and Burgess Hill, this busy and aspirational team works with children and families at the point in their journey where there are safeguarding concerns.
- Children We Care For – this dedicated service has a passion for making a different to our looked after children, alongside an interest and experience of the adoption process.
- Children’s Asylum Team – With Gatwick Airport within our borders, the Children’s Asylum team provides a child protection duty response to the airport and manages new arrivals of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children across our county.
- MASH and Integrated Front Door Team – This fast-moving team is the first point of contact with children and families, our Social Workers in the Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH) and Integrated Front Door can influence their entire journeys.
- Fostering Team – Our Fostering Social Workers act in a supervisory manner for foster carers and work across West Sussex.
- Adoption Team – This team works with prospective adoptive families from adoption recruitment to support pre-adoption order, working in partnership with colleagues from across Children’s Services and our regional adoption agency, Adoption South East .
- Children with Disabilities Team – based in Horsham, Worthing and Bognor Regis this team provides a specialist service for children with more complex, lifelong disabilities and autism.
- Conferencing and Reviewing Service – this team works with children who are subject to child protection plans and with the children that we care for. The team chair conference and review meetings, ensuring that all our children have plans that are outcome focused and achieving positive impact.

We also offer group supervision, one to one supervision and peer learning.

The Family Safeguarding Model

Family Safeguarding is a way of working with families so they can stay together, and children can remain safely at home, where possible. Using this model, in conjunction with motivational interviewing techniques, we work in a more collaborative way where parents are motivated to identify the changes needed within their own families, helping to achieve better outcomes for children.

The model supports children’s Social Workers to tackle the challenges of children’s safeguarding, particularly domestic abuse, substance misuse and mental health, through multi-disciplinary teams that can work with the adults in the family. This whole family approach to child protection provides help and support to children from different professions working as one team. 

Multi-disciplinary teams – a team of specialists working together to address parental domestic abuse, mental health and substance misuse.

The family safeguarding workbook and family programme – an assessment of need leading to a programme of tailored support.

Group case supervision – monthly supervision for each family with input from every professional working with them.

What difference does the Family Safeguarding Model approach make?

- Families are offered the right support at the right time to help them to reduce the risks to their children and enable children to stay at home where it’s safe to do so.

- Schools and local community partners play a key role in identifying and supporting families who need early help.

- Our whole-family approach reduces the number of children coming into care.

- The approach focuses on increasing the engagement of families with professionals and information sharing between professionals is strengthened.

- Health and education outcomes for children is improved.

- Social Workers are able to spend more time working with families and less time on administration

Benefits

We have an exciting and fair pay structure for our social work staff, which is comparable within the marketplace and recognises the levels of responsibility within each of our different roles. You’ll be able to earn from £42,003 as an experienced Social Worker up to £54,533 as an Advanced Social Worker (this includes a market supplement).

As a Social Worker at West Sussex you’ll also have access to:

- Research communities including Research in Practice

- Flexible and hybrid working opportunities

- A minimum of 5 days CPD each year

- Social Work England fees paid

- Annual leave of up to 31 days – with the option to buy/sell additional leave

- An excellent local government pension scheme

- Further training and development opportunities

- A range of discounts with business across the Country

- A salary finance scheme

Whether you’re looking for family-friendly days out, romantic getaways or action-packed adventures, there’s so much to explore and discover in our county – from the picturesque coastline, to rolling hills and beautiful countryside, to bustling towns and a cathedral city. 

West Sussex is also home to Gatwick Airport, many market towns, Arundel Castle, the cathedral city of Chichester and the internationally renowned Goodwood estate, known for its horse racing and motorsport. With such a diverse County, there’s always something to do in West Sussex.

This is a great time to consider working for Children’s Services in West Sussex, if you’d like further information come and speak to our friendly, knowledgeable recruitment team at Compass Jobs Fair in London on 25^th November and find out how West Sussex can change your life, and you can help to change West Sussex.

For more information, or to view our current job opportunities please visit our website: www.westsussex.gov.uk/childrenfirst