Senior Practitioner - Family Support and Safeguarding City Team

Job summary

We have an exciting vacancy in the Family Support and Safeguarding Team for a Senior Practitioner For more information please see the below.

Main duties of the job

We have an exciting vacancy in the Family Support and Safeguarding Team for a Senior Practitioner. For more details about the role please see the below.

About us

We have a wide range of great benefits if you join us as a colleague at Cambridgeshire County Council. To find out more please see below.

Details

• Date posted: 25 August 2026
• Pay scheme: Other
• Salary: £46,956 to £50,157 a year
• Contract: Permanent
• Working pattern: Full-time
• Reference number: VPD53A8F83
• Job locations: Fawcett House, Foster Road, Trumpington, Cambridge, CB2 9NL, United Kingdom

Job responsibilities

Looking for your next challenge as an experienced Social Worker? This is your opportunity to step into a rewarding Senior Practitioner role within our Cambridge City Family Support and Safeguarding Team, where your expertise can help shape brighter futures.

Practitioners in the Family Support & Safeguarding team tell us how much they really value the supportive relationships they have with their colleagues and how flexibly everyone chips in to help one another.

We manage a varied caseload of Child in Need, Children in Need of Protection, Public Law Outline and care proceedings, focusing on children up to the age of 18. We use a Motivational Interviewing approach where you will act in partnership with children and their families to achieve sustainable change and improved outcomes for children.

The role is hybrid with a mix of home and office working. The office base is Fawcett House in Trumpington, Cambridge.

If this sounds like an environment where you would thrive, apply now! If you require more information or would like an informal chat please contactNathalie on 01223 475920 or email joinus@cambridgeshire.gov.uk.

Closing date10th September, interviews will be held week commencing 21st September

Appointment to this post will be subject to the outcome of an Enhanced Disclosure obtained through the Disclosure and Barring Service. The Council is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and vulnerable adults and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment.

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
• 6 days of protected time each year to support in maintaining your Continuous Professional Development
• Scalable retention payments of up to £9,118 over a 3 year period, starting after your first full year of employment
• Arelocation package (eligibility applies)
• ARefer a Friend Schemewhere if you refer another Social Worker to us who is subsequently employed by us as a result of that introduction, well pay you an introduction fee of £350
• Access to our Cambridgeshire Academy for Reaching Excellence (CARE) who will support your development, enabling you to become the best practitioner you can be

For more information and to see our other benefits, take a look at the benefits brochure attached to this advert.

What will you be doing?

Day-to-day responsibilities of a Senior Practitioner in Family Support and Safeguarding include:

• Providingleadership in high complex cases which involve risk, complexity and safety of children, young people and families.
• Providing written and verbal reports for a variety of settings - including for attendance at court - that are concise, informative and based on analysis of complex evidence.
• Leading, guiding and directingSocial Workers and Child Practitioners, supporting with their performance and development, including supervision.
• Support in planning, allocation and review of cases.
• Support with the recruitment and induction of staff.

About you

We're looking for confident and dynamic individuals who enjoy making a difference in their local community, are curious and spot things that others might not see, enjoys building relationships and likes to explore possibilities.

You must:

• Be a qualified Social Worker with a Social Work England registration
• Have the ability to work from a variety of locations and travel countywide independently

This is a Senior Practitioner post, you must be able to demonstrate experience in complex case management, court proceedings, and providing informal support or supervision to others.

For a full list of the requirements of the role, please check out the Job Description & Person Specification.

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 dont meet every single requirement in the job role but think this could be you, please dont 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 Leader. 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. Through a Guaranteed Interview Scheme, we will offer an interview to all applicants who disclose a disability and meet the essential criteria for a job vacancy. On your application form you can indicate you are disabled. Some examples of reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process 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.

http://www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk/council/jobs-and-career