Do you have a talent for building relationships with families and helping them to create sustainable change?
Are you a qualified social worker with experience of supporting and safeguarding children and families and the ability to lead relationship-based practice?
Are you able to demonstrate excellent social work and family help practice and to support other practitioners to develop this?
Would you like to join a service that is rated outstanding, has a well-established model of relational practice, and is striving to embed anti-racist practice?
We have introduced our new family help pods as part of our Families First Transformation. The family help pods will provide family help and social work support to families, providing this support as early as possible to help prevent families' challenges escalating. We are looking for senior social workers who can lead social work and family help practice in these teams, bringing together keyworkers and social worker to create excellent practice across family help and social work.
Interviews to be held: 26 June 2026
There is full information about the role below and attached but, if you would like an informal discussion, please contact Tom Stibbs, Families First Programme Director on 07717 303206 or email
[email protected]
About the role
You will be one of 2fte senior social workers in a small team of social worker and keyworkers, known as a pod, providing support to families receiving family help (targeted early help and child in need) as well as child protection plans and children in care. The pod will support children from the first assessment across all of the family help and social work processes, providing continuing for families and practitioners. You will be managed by a pod manager and will help to lead and support the pod. Your pod will be based with 3 other pods and linked to one of our Best Start Family Hubs serving the community in one of 4 areas in the city.
We are looking for excellent practitioners who can build purposeful relationships with families and help to embed excellent practice across the system. You will need to be able to support other practitioners, providing supervision for students and ASYEs and helping to facilitate group supervisions. Senior social workers often develop specialist knowledge in an area of practice and help to disseminate this across the service.
Working for us you will have the opportunity to be part of an unique whole-system approach to relationship-based practice, which does not rely on agency workers. You will be part of a system that prioritises trauma-informed relationships wihtin teams and with families. Support will be provided to develop you skills as a relationship-based leader. You will also have opportunity to be part of creating innovative new teams which focus on working more closely with communities and shifting support to prevention.
Encouraging a diverse workforce
Our city is known and loved for its diversity. Not only is the mixture of people, culture and skills vital to the economic and social development of the city, it's what makes Brighton & Hove such a great place to live, work and visit. We are committed to developing and retaining a workforce that is representative of the diverse communities we serve so we welcome applications from individuals from all backgrounds. In order to achieve our aims of proportionate representation, we particularly encourage applicants from a BME or White Other background as well as those who identify as disabled, male or trans.
Find out more about our commitment to being a fair and inclusive place to work where everyone can achieve their potential by reading about our fair and inclusive actions, our anti-racism strategy and the work we are doing to encourage a diverse workforce (brighton-hove.gov.uk).
Why work for us?
As a council, we want to:
- be connected
- be confident
- be innovative and creative
- be diverse and inclusive
- be healthy and psychologically safe
For more information about our values and the benefits of working at the council, visit Why work for us which gives details of our wellbeing support, our benefits including leave and pensions as well as details of our training and development.
How to apply
Please read our Apply for a job at the council pages carefully. They give you all the guidance you need to complete your application as well as information on what will happen after you’ve submitted your application and at interview.
As part of your application, you will need to provide your education and career history and answer some application/shortlisting questions. Your answers to the application/shortlisting questions are the most important part of your application as they will be used in the shortlisting process to assess whether you meet the essential requirements for the role that are set out in the person specification and to decide whether you should be offered an interview. Before you start your application, please read our Shortlisting questions guidance (brighton-hove.gov.uk) as this gives important advice which will increase your chance of success in the shortlisting process.
AI advice for candidates
We are interested in hearing about your experience and skills in your own words. While we value people who know how to use AI, we ask that you minimise using it in your application.
We are keen to hear how your experience and skills align to our values and the skills and experience needed to perform well in our roles with clear real examples from you. To support you in this, we have guidance on using the STAR model which can help you ensure you are telling us your whole story. We also provide clarity on the skills we are looking for in our adverts and in the job description/person specification attached to each job advert.
All the applications we receive are read by at least two hiring managers and we do not use AI in this process. Our experience of reading applications is that those that have heavily used AI contain generic paragraphs that are strikingly similar to other applicants’ responses. This makes it extremely difficult to differentiate between applications, and doesn't give us enough evidence of your individual skills. There is a risk that we will therefore not be able to shortlist you. Instead, we recommend you ensure your application stands out by presenting clear examples of your actual skills and experiences in your own words.
Additional information
Your starting salary will be pro rata if the above position is less than 37 hours or term-time only.
Please note that this post is exempt from the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974, and is subject to a Disclosure & Barring Service (DBS) Check.
We are a workplace that supports flexibility and employee wellbeing in the way we work whilst providing the best service for our customers. Team and service working arrangements are designed to support both employee work life balance and team collaboration. These would be part of your individual working arrangements alongside any personal preference agreed with your manager in advance of joining. Your contractual location will be the designated council office for your team and travel to and from your contractual location would be at your own expense.
