Case Responsible Officer, Substance Misuse
Cheltenham
This is a Gloucestershire County Council job.
- Job Title: Case Responsible Officer, Substance Misuse
- Job Location: Cheltenham
- Salary: £37,280 - £40,777 per annum
- Hours per Week: 37
- Contract Type: Fixed Term
- Duration: 10 months
- Closing Date: 09/11/2025
- Job Requisition Number: 12869
- This post is open to job share
We have an opportunity for someone to join our dedicated Youth Support Team as a Case Responsible Officer for Substance Misuse on a 10 month fixed term basis.
Reward and Support
For all your hard work, you will receive the following:
- between £37,280 - £40,777 per annum subject to experience
- 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
- cycle to work 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)
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 substance misuse team is responsible for providing assessment, stabilisation, and assisted withdrawal for individuals with substance misuse problems. They provide specialist substance misuse assessment, care planning, specialist risk assessment and risk management and treatment (as per Public Health England definitions) for children, young people, and their families.
About the role
The successful candidate will be responsible for providing substance misuse treatment to children and young people across the county including:
• effectively supporting and prioritising, based on risk, a caseload of children and young people using substances
• a focus on harm reduction and supporting children and young people to be safer, recognising that the work is undertaken with some of the most vulnerable individuals in the county
• undertaking screening and referral of children and young people in line with county protocols and safeguarding practices
• working with children and young people, through the building and sustaining of quality therapeutic relationships, in order to support recovery in their own communities, enable them to make informed choices about their substance use, and enable them to minimise and manager harm to themselves through the safer use of substances, towards a goal of abstinence
• deliver evidence-based psychosocial interventions including MI, CBT, ACRA
• using clinical supervision to reflect on own practice within the ethos of reflective and scientific practice
• contributing to health practice within the Youth Support Team so that it is developed and exercised within best practice and evidence-based guidelines
• providing staff from the Youth Support Team, and partner agencies, with support, consultation, and training on substance misuse issues
About You
As well as your experience, there are some things we require of you to be successfully appointed to this post:
- a full driving licence and willingness to drive
- DBS clearance
- excellent engagement and communication skills and the ability to communicate complex information to children and young people
- excellent skills in engaging and building relationships with children and young people
- excellent IT skills.
How to apply
For an informal chat about this role, please contact Louise Denman at Louise.Denman@gloucestershire.gov.uk.
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 on Monday 24th November 2025.
If you would like to find out more about our Children's Service please take a look here: Children's Social Care Careers | Gloucestershire County Council
The council is not currently able to offer sponsorship in this role. Candidates will need to have right to work that enables them to commit to at least 6 months employment. Right to work is not transferable from a sponsored role held with another employer.
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:-
Case Responsible Officer (CRO) 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.