Overview
Senior Social Worker – Permanent
This is a Gloucestershire County Council job.
- Job Title: Senior Social Worker
- Job Location: Shire Hall, Block 5, 2nd Floor
- Salary: £41,771 – £47,181 per annum
- Hours per Week: 37.00
- Contract Type: Permanent
- Closing Date: 28/05/2026
- Job Requisition Number: 14193
- This post is not open to job share
Are you a Social Worker passionate about working with people to promote independence, dedicated to making a difference and looking for your next career move?
We would love to hear from you!
About the role:
We have a full time Senior Social Worker position available in our Acute Social Care Team, supporting the Pathway 1 workstream.
The Senior Social Worker role could be the perfect next step of your career; with this role offering you more challenge and complexity, without the added management responsibility. We look to our Senior Social Workers to provide expert social work practice in complex situations, assessing and managing higher levels of risk. You will work closely with a range of professionals and more senior managers to ensure a balance of support and independence is achieved, through offering expert evidence-based opinion.
About the team:
The Acute Social Care Team is a county‑wide service working at the heart of health and social care integration in Gloucestershire. The team delivers statutory adult social care functions across three key workstreams, supporting people at critical points in their hospital and community journeys, and ensuring the local authority meets its responsibilities under the Care Act 2014 and the Hospital Discharge and Community Support Guidance.
A core part of the team is based within the acute hospitals: Gloucestershire Royal Hospital and Cheltenham General Hospital. Working closely with health colleagues, the team supports complex discharge planning, undertakes safeguarding enquiries within the acute hospitals, and provides social care support to wards. The team also plays a vital role in the Integrated Flow Hub, contributing pathway decision‑making to support patient flow and safe discharges.
Alongside this, the team includes a dedicated housing workstream, providing specialist support for people with complex housing issues. This workstream bridges the gap between health, social care, and housing services, helping to navigate often the housing systems and ensuring that accommodation challenges do not become a barrier to safe discharge or recovery.
The third workstream focuses on Pathway 1, supporting people who have been discharged home from hospital and require follow up and social care support. The Senior Social Worker role sits within this Pathway 1 workstream, playing a key role in promoting independence, coordinating care, and ensuring people receive the right support at the right time in their own homes.
About you:
As a Senior Social Worker, we understand the work you do on a daily basis and provide the support you need to make a difference to the people of Gloucestershire. To join us, you must:
- Have a social work qualification and be SWE* registered
- Have completed your ASYE* programme and have at least 2 years post completion service
- Enjoy working in a fast-paced environment
- Have the passion to promote people’s strengths and the ability to make a difference in a safe working approach to social work practice
- Have up to date knowledge of legislation and demonstrable experience of providing credible approaches to practice.
- Be able to prioritise, using a risk based approach
Our values are at the heart of everything we do and how we treat each other. They provide essential guiding principles about the way that we work and set the tone for our culture, and identify what we, as an organisation, care about. See more about our Values on our website.
If you hold the same behaviours and approach, then we want to hear from you! In exchange, we will provide you with full training and support to help you succeed in your role.
About us:
Why Gloucestershire?
Enchanting Cotswold villages, picturesque countryside backdrops, and a never-ending selection of exciting days out, attractions and events; Gloucestershire really does have something for everyone. Gloucestershire is the perfect place to live and work with a great mix of rural and city locations. Find out more about living and working in Gloucestershire.
This is a fantastic opportunity to join Gloucestershire County Council. You can be confident of becoming part of welcoming, passionate, innovative, and highly supportive teams.
Gloucestershire County Council provides the following rewards package in return for your hard work:
- 25.5 days annual leave rising to 30.5 days after 5 years’ service, plus bank holidays
- Option to purchase up to 10 days of additional leave per year (pro rata for part time employees)
- Access to the Local Government Pension Scheme
- Regular formal and informal support
- Safe, supportive and positive working environment with regular, robust supervision
- Training and development opportunities
- Clear career progression pathways, to support you in progressing professionally and personally
- Personal licences to Adults CCINFORM
- Reimbursement of professional Social Work registration fees
- Family friendly policies and benefits to help support you and your family
- Staff discount scheme that offers access to great savings including discounts with major supermarket chains and high street retailers
- Access to our Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) that provides free, confidential, counselling and advice for employees, available 24 hours a day, online and by telephone
- Cycle to Work scheme
- Links to employee networks such as Prism (LGBT+) network and the Young Employees Network
We’re closer than you think:
We are an easy commute from many locations, view our commuting times map to see what we mean.
Applying:
Please write your application with consideration for the criteria in the Job Profile. This should include examples of why you should be considered and evidence of the experience, skills and knowledge that you would bring to the post.
For an informal discussion with the team manager, please contact ASCrecruitment@gloucestershire.gov.uk
Additional Information:
To access the Job Profile for this role, please follow the link below:
Senior Social Worker Job Profile
This Position is subject to a DBS check.
Gloucestershire County Council is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people or vulnerable adults and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment.
The council is not currently able to offer sponsorship in this role. Candidates will need to have right to work that enables them to commit to at least 6 months employment. Right to work is not transferable from a sponsored role held with another employer.
We want to be an employer of choice, attracting and retaining excellent people to work for us, so that we can best serve all of Gloucestershire’s diverse communities. Our promise to you is that we will provide an inclusive and supportive working environment that enables you to bring your whole self to work and realise your full potential.
It is a legal requirement, under the Immigration Act 2016, that anyone appointed to a ‘customer facing role’ must be able to demonstrate an ability to fulfil all spoken aspects of the role with confidence in fluent English.
We reserve the right to close this vacancy early due to the volume of applications received and / or due to the needs of the service. If you are interested in applying, we encourage you to submit your application as early as possible.
If you are an Internal applicant and consider yourself to have a disability* as per the Equality Act (2010), please declare this in an email to recruitment@gloucestershire.gov.uk, as this is NOT currently covered in the application due to a technical error. By providing this information, you can choose to be considered for a guaranteed interview under our Disability Confident pledge if you meet all essential criteria. It also enables the recruiting manager to arrange any reasonable adjustments you may need during the process.
*a disability is defined as: a physical or mental impairment, which has a substantial and long-term (more than 12 months) adverse effect on a person’s ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities.
Applications from any Gloucestershire County Council’s employees who are currently on the redeployment register or at risk of redundancy will be considered first at shortlisting stage.
IMPORTANT: Before applying for this role, please make sure you have the right to work in the country where the role is based. Unless it clearly stipulates within in the job advert above that the hiring company is looking to or able to sponsor applicants it is deemed that the hiring employer will only consider applications from those able to comply with and work in the country where the role is based.
