Senior Practitioners (All Children's Teams)

Job Title: Qualified Children's Senior Practitioner
Starting Salary: £42,839 per annum + £6,443 pa market enhanced payment progressing to £47,181 per annum + £6,279 pa market enhanced payment* PLUS £1k one off welcome payment* - pay award pending
Hours: 37
Location: Base locations in Stevenage (East) and Hemel Hempstead (West). Whilst you will have a base, each team has a geographic area they cover which will require regular access to a vehicle in order to travel to meetings.
Contract Type: Permanent and Fixed Term
Directorate: Childrens Services

All roles are full time and permanent unless otherwise stated below under 'about the role'

About the service

At Hertfordshire County Council, we believe that the children and young people in our care deserve the best. And that means ensuring the social workers who work alongside them are trained, supported, and highly motivated.

As an innovative authority, we are committed to developing motivational social work practice and you will be trained to work in this way. You will be working at the forefront of best practice to deliver first class support to vulnerable children and families which will expose you to managing complex and diverse caseloads.

By changing our approach to families, they are changing their approach to us and we are managing to keep far more children at home safely with their families.

With dedicated Diversity & Inclusion strategy and focus groups, we promote diversity and inclusion across the delivery of services and within our workforce.

We will offer a stimulating working environment, regular supervision meetings and training opportunities to help you to reach your full potential with the assistance and guidance of our specialist L&D teams.

The pandemic has brought about changes in the way we work and having learnt from this and from feedback from our staff and communities, we are embedding important principles around ‘Our Way Forward’. The overarching vision for Children’s Services is that we work in a ‘flexible and balanced’ way with a focus on ‘continuous improvement’; this is underpinned by a ‘mix and blend’ approach by adopting hybrid ways of working, balancing the need for collaborative workspaces with the right technology for staff to work from home and touchdown areas where this is right for you and for our families.

About the role

Each Team is made up of; a Team Manager, Consultant Social Worker(s), Senior Practitioners, Social Workers, Children's Practitioners and Family Practitioners.

We are looking for experienced Senior Practitioners to join one of the following teams:

• Family Safeguarding East (Permanent or Secondment / FTC to Dec 2026), based in Stevenage
• Family Safeguarding West, based in Hemel Hempstead
• 0-25 Disability Assessment Team, based in Stevenage
• MASH, based in Stevenage - please submit applications no later than 14th August 2026. (x1 perm & x1 6 month fixed term/secondment)

As a Senior Practitioner, you will already have highly developed specialist knowledge of Social Work practice. Your advanced expertise and knowledge will help you to take the lead on complex cases within the department.

This is a varied and challenging role where you will have shared responsibility for leading less experience staff. You will have a key role in researching and sharing up to date social work practice alongside creating a clear vision for the future and ensuring the best outcomes for children and their families are realised.

About you

We are pleased to offer sponsorship of eligible roles that met the UKV&I requirements for candidates who currently reside in the UK at the time of application.

It is essential that all Senior Practitioners who apply have the following:

• Qualified and Social Work England Registered
• At least 3 years post qualifying experience
• Strong written and verbal communication skills
• Knowledge of legislation, guidance, policy, and procedures
• Proficient in the use of Microsoft IT package
• Full UK Driving Licence
• Regular Access to a vehicle

In addition to the above, below outlines team specific essential criteria:

Family Safeguarding:

• Significant senior level frontline experience in a safeguarding team.
• Recent experience of case work in Assessments, Child Protection, Children Looked After and Care Proceedings
• In-depth knowledge of relevant childcare legislation is necessary to undertake work in this role effectively.
• For an informal conversation about the role, please contact [email removed] or [email removed]

0-25 Disability Service:

• Ability to complete robust assessments & to assess risk.
• Ability to work in a relationship-based way.
• Knowledge/experience of working with Disabled Children and Young People
• Knowledge of legislation, guidance, policy, and procedure specific to Disabled Children and Young People
• For an informal conversation about the role, please contact [email removed]

MASH:

MASH triages requests for support for Hertfordshire’s Children and Families.

• You will be a highly skilled and experienced safeguarding social worker as the work is fast paced and requires a high level of autonomous working.
• Some experience supervising or mentoring staff or students.
• Excellent organisational skills to ensure that work is prioritised and completed within the set timescales.
• Effective rapport building skills and ability to demonstrate professional curiosity.
• Sound analytical skills to make robust recommendations and plans.
• Ability to work autonomously whilst being a team player.
• Additional specialisms in areas such SEND, child exploitation or contextualised safeguarding is desirable but not essential.
• For an informal conversation about the role, please contact [email removed]

Due to the multi-agency element of the MASH, this position requires core working hours where you will be expected to attend the Stevenage office two days per week (days are between Tuesday and Thursday) which is non-negotiable.

This job role is within the Health and Social Care, level 11 job profile. Please locate this via:

Job profiles - Health and social care

To read more about our service and opportunities available visit our Childrens Social Work page

Recruitment timeline: We review all applications regularly, with interviews arranged on an ad hoc basis - please check your emails for updates.

Benefits of working for us

Additional Benefits for Social Work roles include:

• Mon