Gloucestershire County Council Adults Social Care

Gloucestershire County Council  Adults Social Care Click to enlarge
 
 

Working in Adult Social Care 

It’s a fantastic time to join Gloucestershire County Council as we transform our Adult Social Care services. With an array of brilliant benefits – including hybrid working, relocation allowance, employee assistance programme, tax-free childcare, cycle to work scheme and staff discounts – you’ve got a rewarding role in every sense. Our teams are helping people with increasingly complex needs to remain independent and have a say in how they live. To succeed, we need people who’ll go the extra mile to see others are happy and well and give families peace of mind. People who are passionate about making a difference and know that caring for others is the most rewarding career around!

Head of Service, Keith Vardy: "I feel incredibly proud to work for Adult Social Care in Gloucestershire. Our teams know that they are valued and listened to, and it is them that make Gloucestershire such a great place to be.  Every day I hear stories about the tenacity and commitment of my colleagues as they go about their work truly making a difference to those whose lives they touch. I think that this is what motivates us all to do our very best."

Our Vision

We are working together with the people and communities of Gloucestershire to reflect what matters to them and set high expectations for the future. Our vision is to make the most of all that Gloucestershire has to offer, to help improve the quality of life for every community, support businesses to be successful, and ensure the county is a place where people want to live, work and visit.

We encourage "brave" social work

Adult Social Care encourages Social Workers to use their professional judgement to achieve the best possible outcomes. Our teams use the ‘3 Conversations’ approach, a model that focuses on people, their strengths and the networks and community around them. Our service covers six locality teams alongside specialist teams, such as the Learning Disabilities and Hospital Discharge and Assessment Teams. We’re dedicated to improving the lives of individuals, families and carers, over the age of eighteen. Our teams work collaboratively with local partners, care providers and the voluntary sector to maximise independence for individuals, and support for families and carers across Gloucestershire. See how Gloucestershire Adult Social Care’s #Makethedifference 3 Conversation approach is transforming lives and reinvigorating social work in the county by reading our Community Care Editorial .

Training and Development

In Adult Social Care we offer opportunities for staff to reach their full potential to achieve their career goals in Gloucestershire. We focus on creative development opportunities, that support staff to deliver quality practice so they can focus on people first. Some of our training and development opportunities in Adult Social Care are:

·       Induction

We will offer you a wealth of support during your induction, including shadowing opportunities, a buddy for informal support and face to face corporate and service inductions. We recognise that your induction is fundamental to you finding your feet, meeting new people and understanding the service and organisation you are a part of.

·       Bite-size mandatory training

We offer a concise and accessible mandatory training plan. Our mandatory training is focused on key practice areas that our staff have told us are important to them, such as dementia, autism, mental capacity, safeguarding and eligibility. We also look at ways to make mandatory training more accessible, including having shorter courses (to reduce time spent away from the people we work with) and by using different venues across the county to make it easier for people in teams that are not centrally based to access training.

·       Learning at your fingertips

We’ve invested heavily in supporting learning and development outside the classroom. All our practitioners get access to Community Care Inform, which they can use to access practice guidance relevant to their cases whenever they need them. We also encourage staff to share ideas and their knowledge with other team members. 

·       Transfers

Lots of social workers want to develop their career without moving into management and that is something Gloucestershire keenly supports. We have developed clear career paths for staff who want to stay in practice and to encourage staff to get diverse experiences, we have developed an internal transfer scheme - making it easier to move around within the service. We also have a dedicated Recruitment and Retention Team that works with our practitioners to identify how their careers can develop.

·       Valuing you

Our CPD offer is driven by feedback from our practitioners. Adult Social Care has a Practice Development Team, who spend a lot of time with teams picking up on areas people do not feel confident in or about gaps in practice. Those insights are then used to plan ahead and further develop our continuous professional development offer. We also work very hard to keep staff informed through our monthly newsletters packed with information that helps our localities connect and share knowledge and insights.

Living in Gloucestershire

The county has an excellent choice of places to live - from the city of Gloucester itself, and larger towns such as Cheltenham and Cirencester, to smaller villages and rural locations. There really is a suitable location for everyone.

Our natural environment is also incredibly varied. You’ll discover different types of landscape, 123 Sites of Special Scientific Interest and three Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (including the Cotswolds and Wye Valley), as well as nature reserves and other natural assets.

We are an easy commute from many locations, view our commuting times map to see what we mean. However, we understand that commuting isn’t for everyone, so if you are in the process of relocating, why not email us to discuss opportunities further.

Contact Us

Join us, and you’ll get the chance to make a real impact on people’s lives. It’s a great opportunity to help us take our service to new heights. We genuinely care about our colleagues and support their wellbeing. We’ll say thank you with a range of excellent benefits as well as the training and support to develop your career.

 

Interested? Come along and visit our Adults Recruitment and Retention Team! If you need more information, email us or visit our website   to learn more.