Date: 10 Jun 2026
Job Location:
Cheltenham
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This is a Gloucestershire County Council job.
Job Title: Social Worker/Senior Social Worker - Children in Care
Job Location: Grosvenor Hall
Salary: £39,152 - £47,181 per annum
Hours per Week: 37.00
Contract Type: Permanent
Closing Date: 12/07/2026
Job Requisition Number: 14323
This post is open to job share
We are currently recruiting for a Social Worker to join our dedicated Children in Care Team in Cheltenham.
Reward and Support
For all your hard work, you will receive the following:
between £39,152 - £47,181 per annum subject to experience (pro rata for part-time staff)
£4,000 welcome payment*
£2,000 retention payment*
up to £8,000 relocation package**
flexible and agile working opportunities
25.5 days annual leave rising to 30.5 days after 5 years continuous service (pro rata for part-time staff)
option to purchase 10 days of additional leave per year (pro rata for part-time staff)
family friendly policies and benefits to help support you and your family
supportive and positive working environment with regular, robust supervision
Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS)
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
an in-house Occupational Health service
employee discount scheme
links to employee networks such as Prism (LGBT+) and the Young Employees Network
career development and qualification opportunities
access to our Social Work Academy
Cycle to Work scheme (eligibility criteria and t&cs apply)
Green Car Salary Sacrifice Scheme (eligibility criteria and t&cs apply)
- Please note that all our welcome and retention payments are subject to terms and conditions as well as tax and national insurance deductions
**Please note that our relocation policy is subject to terms and conditions
Right child, right support, right time, every time
In our recent inspection in June 2025, our Children’s Services have been officially judged as ‘Good’ with ‘Outstanding’ elements. Ofsted also said ‘Leaders have set out a clear vision for delivering success for children, by modelling values and creating a culture where the workforce, children and families feel valued and heard; risk is managed confidently with bottom lines clearly set out.’
This marks an important step in our journey to improve outcomes for our children and young people, and we remain focused on our mission: to continue building on this success and ensure that every child and young person in our county has the opportunity to thrive.
Gloucestershire offers a range of opportunities to develop your career, supported by a phenomenal Social Work Academy offer, a developing systemic practice methodology, an ambitious leadership team and an award-winning workforce.
We are a local authority adopting, and training all colleagues in, systemic social work practice. If you would like to be part of an authority that takes a relational approach to working with families and focuses on what needs to change in the system around a child and family to enable children to thrive, then consider a role with GCC.
About the team
The Children in Care teams are made up of 5 Social Workers, and an Advanced Practitioner. The teams often have a newly qualified Social Worker, a Senior Social Worker and Experienced Social Workers, so you will always have support around you.
Social Workers enjoy meeting up and sharing their expert knowledge about casework and we make the learning times an enjoyable occasion.
The Gloucestershire Social Work Academy provide many training sessions to increase knowledge and understanding of the specialist work we do, such as Life Story Work for young people, to help them understand why they came into care.
Also, we have team away days to consolidate our learning, and share our expertise throughout the team, as well as weekly team check ins, so that you never feel isolated as a practitioner.
About you
As a Social Worker within our Children in Care teams, you will be instrumental in delivering a first-class service to ensure the best outcomes for the children and young people of Gloucestershire. Through building positive relationships with colleagues within the service and partner agencies you will ensure we are able to provide support and protection for children and young people in need and at risk.
As well as your experience as a frontline social worker, there are some things we require of you to be successfully appointed to this post:
Social Work England registration
a recognised qualification in Social Work
to have passed your Assessed and Supported Year in Employment (ASYE) if qualified after 2012
a full driving licence and willingness to drive
DBS clearance (Enhanced Adult’s and Children’s)
How to apply
For an informal chat about this role, please contact
[email protected].
We reserve the right to close an advertisement earlier than the stated closing date if we receive a suitable number of applications.
Interviews are due to take place in person Thursday 9th July 2026
If you would like to find out more about our Children's Service please take a look here: Children's Social Care Careers | Careers hub
We welcome applications from newly qualified and social workers in the early years of their career. Depending on your qualification date and previous experience, you will be invited to either join our accredited ASYE programme or to complete an alternative early‑career development in-house pathway. The appropriate option will be explored and confirmed as part of the interview and offer process.
We may be able to offer sponsorship for this role, in line with Home Office guidance and subject to pre-employment checks. Applicants must already hold a valid right to work in the UK that Gloucestershire County Council can transfer.
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
[email protected], 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 shortlisting criteria. It also enables the recruiting manager to arrange any reasonable adjustments you may need during the interview 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.
Under the terms of our Safer Recruitment Policy, if you are invited to interview, we will take up safeguarding references prior to your interview to understand your suitability to work with vulnerable children. These references will then be discussed in your interview. Please give details of at least two referees, one of whom must be your present and/or last employer and the other from a previous employer(s). These will need to cover the last three years of employment/education. In the case of applicants leaving full time education or not having worked since doing so, the Head of School, College or University should be one of the named referees. We do not accept references from friends or family members or workplace colleagues (who are not more senior). To ensure we process your application in a speedy and efficient way, we will contact your referees by DocuSign. Where appropriate, please inform them of your application.
Additional Information
To access the Job Profile for this role, please follow the link below: -
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.
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.
Hybrid working arrangements are available for the majority of our roles, giving teams the opportunity to work in a way that suits them, balancing service need and individual choice, with a mix of both remote and office working.
