Work for Children's Services

At Solihull Council, we pride ourselves on being a Council that is small enough to care, but big enough to make a difference.

We are always on the lookout for talented individuals who want to make a positive difference to people’s lives and can help us to continue building on our success.

Your development and wellbeing are at the heart of our employee offer. We will support you to fulfil your career aspirations in an environment that enables you to flourish both professionally and personally.

Opportunities with Solihull Council

We have a range of vacancies in Children’s Services, ranging from support workers to newly qualified and experienced social workers, as well as promotional opportunities for those wanting to take on their next challenge as an Assistant Team Manager.

This is an exciting time as we are also currently recruiting to some new senior social worker vacancies across our frontline teams.

So, whatever your level of experience, we have a range of fantastic opportunities and there has never been a better time for you to join our ambitious team and progress your career with us. Join us and make a real difference to people’s lives in Solihull.

Find out more about our current vacancies

If you are thinking about getting into social work, you can also join us through the following programmes:

We also offer an annual apprenticeship intake for social work for individuals already working with us.

About Children’s Services

Our Children’s Services are on a transformational journey, designed to improve the outcomes and experience of the children and families we work with. We place children at the heart of decision making and practice. We are investing in our services and people, putting additional resources in place to ensure the best possible outcomes for our children, young people and their families. And we want you to help us make this happen.

We recognise hard work and encourage new ways of thinking as we work to our robust improvement plan. And we are engaging our social workers throughout our improvement journey to develop a culture of “can do” that will enable us to deliver excellent services.

We want all children and young people to thrive, be healthy, happy, safe and prosperous, so as a team, we are working closely with other organisations and professionals and families with openness and with integrity to learn and develop our practice.

We are working towards a restorative practice model, undertaking holistic assessments to determine a family’s immediate and long-term needs. We will work in collaboration with children, young people and their families to ensure their views are heard, understood and taken on-board whenever possible.

Welcome, from Pete Campbell, Director of Children’s services

Pete Campbell - Director of Children's Services

Thank you for considering a career with Solihull Council.

As Director of Children’s Services, I am proud to lead such a committed and dedicated team that really cares about improving outcomes for children and families in Solihull.

I am delighted that you are exploring opportunities to progress your career in Children’s Services here in Solihull. Recent years have been a particular challenge for our service - the disruption of the pandemic, changes in key staff, a disappointing outcome from Ofsted inspections and safeguarding episodes of national interest. 

These challenges have forced us to ‘re-set’ and create a new vision for the children and families we serve. We are ambitious to do better. The Council have committed to improving Children’s Services as the number one priority, and we also benefit from strong partnerships across the region. Ofsted have challenged us to ‘Place children at the heart of decision making and practice’ and this is what we will do. We are very positive about the future.  

Our Directorate’s vision is that we work in partnership to deliver services for children, young people and families so that they receive the right support at the right time and are enabled to thrive in their communities.

With inspiring determined and committed colleagues, we believe we can reach the very highest standards and expectations.

We are putting the structures in place for you to be able to excel and fulfil your career here. Please look at the current vacancies we have, feel free to contact us to discuss opportunities and you will also be welcome to visit us and see what we offer.

Find out more about our Children’s Social Care teams

Multi Agency Safeguarding Team (MASH) / Early Help Team

We are seeking none case holding MASH social workers who have 2 years PQ experience in children’s safeguarding to join our busy MASH service. We are currently well on with our improvement journey and have a clear plan of improvement, which brings opportunity for our staff as well as the opportunity for professional development and the ability to influence and shape the service.

Our MASH is our single point of referral for children across the  borough. We have strong links with our MASH partners and are building on the strong links with our partners and early help services. The role for MASH social workers is to complete mash enquiries under the direction of a manager and make recommendations on the needs of children and their families and what needs to happen for these needs to be met.

Early Help Team

We are a small team of dedicated social workers with a wide range of experience in Children’s, Adults and Mental Health areas of social work. We are a very supportive team who cover Solihull outside of usual working hours. EDT workers have access to their manager on call as well as the senior Manager on call as required. 

Childrens Assessment/ Children In Need/ Child Protection and Court Team

Children's assessment teams completing child and family assessment, section 47s and some child in need work. We work on a 5-week duty model enabling social workers ample time to produce high quality child and family assessments within timescales, ensuring we are able to really get to know a family, identify their needs and understand the lived experiences of each child. Caseloads are low and we are committed to ensuring they are kept this way.

We are on a journey of improvement and will welcome social workers who are looking to complete their ASYE with us as well as social workers who are able to bring their valued experiences to our teams. We have a stable workforce within this service and have a good team atmosphere and morale. We work with families until the point of the first court hearing, ICPC or CIN meeting.

We work with children and family in need of support. Our social workers are passionate and committed to making a difference in the lives of children being supported as part of a Child In Need intervention.

Successful candidates will integrate one of our Social Work pods supported by their line manager and will be expected to focus their work on good quality assessment and dynamic planning and work alongside families and partners to deliver a timely and intensive intervention to children and families in need of support.

We are a hardworking and dedicated team of social workers working with some of our most vulnerable children and families. Our social workers are passionate and committed to making a difference in the lives of children subject to child protection plan and / or involved in care proceedings.

Successful candidates will integrate one of our social work pods supported by their line manager and will be expected to work alongside partners to deliver timely evidence based interventions both within the child protection process but also within pre-proceedings/care proceedings through to permanency planning.

We work with children who have complex needs and require intensive intervention to ensure that their needs are met, and they can achieve their full potential.

Successful candidates will integrate one of our social work pods supported by their line manager and will have experience in working with children with complex needs and undertaking varied and diverse case management activities including good quality assessment and timely / dynamic intervention and planning.

Looked After Children and 16+

We support children and young people who are in in the care of Solihull Council in foster care, residential or secure settings as well as those who are placed with parents. This work relies upon the development of meaningful long-term relationships with children, young people and their carers.

We work to ensure that children’s plans remain right for them and that they do not remain looked after for longer than necessary. Whilst children and young people are in our care, we offer high quality direct work as well as support with physical and emotional health, education, and family  and social relationships to enable our children and young people to fulfil their potential throughout their lives.

We support children and young people of all ages who arrive in the borough as unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. We support to ensure appropriate and safe accommodation, progression of matters related to immigration status and the safeguarding of young people who have been trafficked and may be victims of modern slavery.

The team also supports all young people in the borough who are care experienced and eligible for services under Leaving Care legislation. We offer long term relationship-based work to develop Pathway Plans for young people that support them to be ambitious for their futures and to achieve independence into adulthood

Fostering/ Residential Homes

We are a warm and welcoming team comprising of have a range of very experienced supervising social workers and workers who are relatively new to the Fostering service, but with a wide range of other experiences. 

We have launched a new recruitment campaign, Foster for Solihull, and we are proud to be supporting our foster carers! We believe that all of Solihull’s children and young people should grow up with a sense of belonging. We want them all to grow up feeling safe, supported and part of a family. We can do this with the help of our carers and our workers.  If you want to join this exciting and evolving team, please contact us.

We are excited to be in the process of developing a residential service and refurbishing three children’s homes.

We want to ensure Solihull can offer our cared for young people local, familiar places to call home so they can maintain links with their families, friends, school and other support networks. Our homes will offer high quality care, with an emphasis on relationship based practice in a family style environment, with a well trained workforce.

We look forward to sharing our progress.

Performance Hub

Safeguards

The work of the SSCP is around our partnership working within and across Solihull and ensuring that partners work together around the planning for children and young people.

We also deliver and promote multi-agency training and undertake a wide range of work across all partner agencies and their work with children and families and seek to evaluate how well the multi-agency work is taking place. This involves a range of different activities so we can assure ourselves of the difference we are making locally in Solihull.

Within our Child Protection and Review Unit we have Child Protection Conference Chairs and Independent Reviewing Officers.

Their role is to chair a range of meetings around the planning for children and young people and to ensure plans for children and young people are progressing and the voices of children and young people and their parents are heard.

They chair meetings involving children and young people, parents and other professionals including social workers.

The service is part of our wider quality assurance work and is aimed at ensuring plans for children and young people progress in line with her needs.

Family Group Conferencing

Within the service we also have the Local Authority Designated Officer (LADO) and their role is to follow up and respond to allegations involving individuals who volunteer and work with children and young people.

Our Principal Social Worker works across all of our teams and services supporting our social worker and workers across children’s services.

They are involved in:

  • key pieces of work around recruitment
  • support for social workers
  • our policies work
  • developing and delivering training
  • listening to the views of social workers and supporting their voices

We also have our quality assurance function within the service and this includes all of our quality assurance and auditing work aimed at improving and driving practice outcomes for children and young people.

Youth Justice

Exploitation Team

Missing Team

Youth Justice Service Team

Our Voice Our Service Team - OVOS

Our workforce vision is to:

  • Attract, recruit and retain skilled, qualified and experienced staff that share our values and demonstrate our core behaviours
  • Provide all staff with clear roles and responsibilities
  • Ensure you have regular supervision
  • Give teams and individuals rewarding jobs that make a positive difference to adults, children, young people, their families, carers and communities
  • Provide all staff with personal development, access to appropriate training for their jobs and line management support to succeed
  • Provide an effective leadership development programme and structured induction programme for new and existing managers and future leaders
  • Develop a more flexible workforce with good succession and talent management plans
  • Provide support and opportunities for staff to maintain their health and wellbeing
  • Ensure you have a manageable workload

Why Solihull Council

You can find out more about the Benefits of working for Solihull Council.

And you can find out why Solihull is a great place to live and work.

Learning and development

  • Whether you are newly qualified or an experienced professional, our Workforce Development Team will give you all the tools you need to further develop your expertise. We encourage everyone to take part in learning and development opportunities so they can carry out their role effectively.
  • Working towards a Practice Learning and Development Hub for social care teams, to continue to enable a supportive environment to give practitioners excellent learning and development pathways for ongoing continuing professional development.
  • And in Children’s Services, as part of our Improvement journey we are rolling out best practice training for all practitioners within the service, enhancing the skills and knowledge needed and ensuring a consistent approach to working with families.

Contact us

Should you wish to discuss our current opportunities, please call Sarah Harris, Principal Social Worker, on 07796 812306 for an informal discussion.

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