Independent Reviewing Officer

Location

Horsham, West Sussex | United Kingdom

Job description

Job Title : Independent Reviewing Officer
Job Category : Social Care – Qualified
Location : County Hall North, West Sussex County Council, Horsham, West Sussex
Hours Per Week : 37.00
Start Date : Immediate Start
Salary: £29.63
Start Time : 09:00
End Time : 17:30

About the job
You will be working within the Safeguarding, Quality and Practice Service within the Children, Young People and Learning Directorate, responsible for the assurance, review and oversight of up to 70 children. You will model best practice, providing challenge and support to operational social work teams and partners, ensuring that the best outcomes for children and families are achieved. You will champion the voice of the child, ensuring that children’s plans are outcome focused, that impact is captured and that plans progress with pace, achieving permanence in all of its forms for children in West Sussex.

What you’ll need to succeed
You will be excited by the opportunity to work closely with colleagues across the system, passionate about challenging and celebrating practice, to secure the best outcomes for children. You will be resilient, sensitive and empathic to the needs of families with the ability to support those who are in complex situations. As an effective and supportive manager you will be able to influence the effective performance of the teams and partners that you are working with, through an approach involving high support and high challenge. As a confident decision maker, you will be able to effectively provide challenge across the service ensuring that children’s lived experiences and voices are central to our care planning. Due to the nature of this role you will be expected to travel county wide.

Job details
Grade: Hay A
Directorate Group: Children, Young People & Learning
Location: County Wide

Required experience and skills
(These will be used as the shortlisting criteria)

Key Skills:

1. Excellent communication skills with the ability to influence the actions of others and communicate wide ranging information which may be complex and contentious.
2. The ability to negotiate solutions across wide areas of the business and successfully convince others of the need to take a specific course of action or adopt a specific approach for the safety and protection of children
3. The ability to formulate and oversee plans, within which child safety is promoted, risk is sufficiently managed, permanence is progressed, and aspects of care, development and protection are thoroughly considered.
4. Able to formulate accurate, accessible and comprehensive reports
5. The ability to communicate effectively and sensitively with children of all ages, capturing and responding to their wishes, feelings and lived experiences.
6. Excellent organisational and time management skills, with the ability to manage competing needs, in a high pace environment.

Qualifications and/or experience:
⦁ Professional social work qualification and registered with SWE.
⦁ Extensive working knowledge of Child Protection Procedures, The IRO handbook, relevant legislation, regulations and guidance, including Working Together to Safeguard Children.
⦁ Knowledge of Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Legislative Frameworks
⦁ Previous leadership experience within a Children’s Social Care environment
⦁ Comprehensive knowledge of roles and responsibilities of all other agencies involved with children.
⦁ Significant understanding of relevant research, particularly that concerning child development, the effects of separation and loss and attachment theory.
⦁ Detailed experience of child’s journey through social care.

Key responsibilities
Chair a range of meetings to safeguard and promote the welfare of children, ensuring that plans are formulated and progressed by Children’s Social Care and their partners, that are conducive with ensuring that the best outcomes are achieved for children and their families.
Ensuring that the child’s plan is SMART, outcome focused and that progress is measured in accordance with the impact that the plan is having upon improving children’s outcomes, including promoting permanence for children.
Ensuring that plans formulated are informed by the child’s lived experiences and to engage with children and their families, ensuring that they are supported to share their wishes and views either via attendance and/or representation at all meetings.
Excellent communication skills with the ability to influence the actions of others and communicate wide ranging information which may be complex and contentious. Including the ability to negotiate solutions across wide areas of the business and successfully convince others of the need to take a specific course of action or adopt a specific policy for the safety and protection of children.
Deliver presentations and training to a range of audiences in a variety of settings.
Provide professional Child Protection, Safeguarding and Permanency planning advice to specified agencies.
Monitor the implementation of the Local Safeguarding Children Partnership procedures and contribute to the development and maintenance of quality multiagency Child Protection and Safeguarding standards and practice.
Provide mentoring/coaching/on the job training to staff to encourage their development.
Ensure that relevant data is collected for quality monitoring purposes.
Lead service projects and/or reviews, or contribute to corporate projects and/or reviews, challenge existing practices and generating ideas and solutions.
Remain up to date and compliant with all relevant legislation, organisational procedures, policies and professional codes of conduct in order to uphold standards of best practice.
Work inclusively, with a diverse range of stakeholders and promote equality of opportunity.
Contribute to and provide professional leadership of organisational change and development and address performance management issues that arise
Actively contribute to the Quality Assurance aspect of the work undertaken by the Safeguarding and Quality Assurance part of the directorate by participating in the regular auditing of case files, observations of practice and thematic audits.

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