Social Care Practitioner WCC619109

Salary range: £41,580 - £47,628 per annum
Work location: 7A Woodfield Rd, London W9 2BA
Hours per week: 36
Contract type: Permanent
Vetting requirements: Enhanced DBS Check
Closing date: 02 March 2025

Adult Social Care in Westminster City Council is a world of extraordinary stories, where our passionate, caring and committed professionals do brilliant work every day.

As a Social Care Practitioner, you can make your own powerful contribution by helping Westminster residents who are experiencing mental health difficulties - providing both them and their families with an enhanced quality of life by utilising a strength-based approach.

Within the Mental Health Team, we embrace a highly successful multi-agency approach to delivering mental health services that will enable our community to maintain their independence and benefit from a greater sense of wellbeing.

On a day-to-day basis you will support the self-assessment of those who would benefit from access to mental health services. With a focus on helping them either remain in their own homes or return to their homes after being in hospital or a similar environment, you will provide advice and guidance on how their needs can be met. This might range from simple suggestions on the services that they might consider accessing, through to planning interventions and long-term packages of support. This will include making recommendations on equipment and minor adaptations that each person would benefit from, and ensuring that these have been carried out appropriately, so every day will provide you with plenty of variety. Across all that you do, you will ensure safeguarding of vulnerable adults is being considered and adhered to.

Our staff benefit from a unique working environment in which multidisciplinary colleagues come together to deliver the most effective level of support to service users. You will therefore work alongside Social Workers, Psychiatrists, Community Psychiatric Nurses, Psychologists and Psychotherapists, so the chance to develop your knowledge and put your career on an exciting trajectory will be second-to-none. This will include working with external partners such as community services and those in the voluntary sector, so you will have plenty of learning opportunities.

This is a fantastic stepping stone into our social care and mental health teams, so to be equal to the challenge we will expect you to have an NVQ (level 2, 3 and/or 4) or equivalent in Health and Social Care/ Promoting Independence. This will be matched by a willingness to learn, and some experience of working with adults who have physical or mental health problems. With the ability to determine the needs and urgent support requirements of vulnerable individuals, you will have a knowledge of the relevant legislation.

Your personal skills are just as important, as you will be focused on protecting the dignity of every service user, and you will have a great awareness of how various levels of disadvantage may impact on specific communities. With good communication and organisation skills, you will be a team player who is keen to build relationships with multidisciplinary colleagues and teams.

Westminster City Council is committed to supporting Care Leavers into the workplace. Care Leavers seeking their first job and who wish to be considered under our scheme will automatically be invited to interview should they meet the essential criteria for the role.

At Westminster City Council, we pride ourselves on being an inclusive workplace and employer of choice. We encourage and welcome applications from people from all backgrounds and aim to have a workforce that, at all levels, represents the communities we serve. We champion equality, diversity, inclusion and wellbeing and aim to create a workplace where everyone feels valued, has a sense of belonging and is empowered to be their best, that is the Westminster Way.

As a forward-thinking Council we appreciate that people work in different ways, therefore our staff benefit from working a range of flexible working patterns as well as Agile working. The Council is a Disability Confident Employer. If you have declared a disability in your application, we guarantee an interview if you meet the essential criteria of the job. If you are invited for interview, you will be asked if you need any reasonable adjustments in order to attend, and we will make these wherever possible.