Children and Families Advanced Practitioner

This is a Gloucestershire County Council job.
 

• Job Title:                           Children and Families Advanced Practitioner
• Job Location:                     Forest of Dean/Cheltenham 
• Salary:                              £48,226 - £51,356 per annum 
• Hours per Week:                18.5/37
• Contract Type:                   Permanent and Fixed Term Contract
• Closing Date:                    03/05/2026 
• Job Requisition Number:    13953 
• This post is open to job share for the Cheltenham position only

We are currently recruiting for Advanced Practitioners to join our Children & Families team in the Forest of Dean and Cheltenham. The Forest of Dean position is an 18.5 hour per week, permanent position, and our Cheltenham position is a full time (or job share), fixed term contract position for 12 months.

About us

For all your hard work. You will receive the following:

• between £48,226 - £51,356 per annum subject to experience (pro rata for part-time)
• £4,000 welcome payment* (pro rata for part-time)
• annual retention payment of £2,000* (pro rata for part-time)
• 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
• an 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
• paid SWE registration renewal
• Cycle to Work scheme (eligibility criteria and t&cs apply)
• Green Car Salary Sacrifice Scheme (eligibility criteria and t&cs apply)

Our vision

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 you

As an Advanced Practitioner you are at the heart of Gloucestershire’s practice model. You will hold an expert role within your team. Your role includes facilitating the team and service’s ability to develop and deliver complex social work practice through a combination of joint working, practice advice and guidance, and quality assurance.

You will also model Gloucestershire’s relational systemic practice model and will help promote Gloucestershire’s practice standards across the team.

Advanced Practitioners provide direction to team members around improving the quality of practice. This may include activities such as quality assuring an assessment or attending joint visits with social workers to support their learning.

As an Advanced Practitioner you may provide Newly Qualified Social Workers in the team with monthly reflective supervision and undertake one of the observations of practice, however management of the NQSW will sit with Team Managers. You will also support any Social Work students within the team.

You will have a joint lead for a particular area of practice offering a weekly consultation to practitioners from across the service to book into, to support them to develop their practice in that specific area.

You will work closely with the Social Work Academy through regular forums and training to ensure standardised practice across the teams, bringing new learning and training opportunities to social workers within your team.

As an Advanced Practitioner you will hold a small number of cases, ensuring you have dedicated time to follow your other duties.  

To find out more about this role take a look at our video here: https://youtu.be/_F58gxejBqY

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
• experience at Senior Social Worker level
• a recognised qualification in Social Work
• to have completed your ASYE year (if you qualified after 2012)
• a full driving licence and willingness to drive
• enhanced DBS clearance (Enhanced Adults and Children's)

If you would like to find out more about our Children's Services please take a look here: Children's Social Care Careers | Gloucestershire County Council

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.

*Please note, retention payments are non-contractual, pro rata for part-time staff and subject to National Insurance and tax deductions, and are not available to candidates taking up fixed term contracts

**Please note that our relocation package is subject to terms and conditions and is not available to candidates taking up fixed term contracts

We reserve the right to close an advertisement earlier than the stated closing date if we receive a suitable number of applications or fill the vacancy/vacancies.

The council will consider sponsorship for this role, in line with Home Office regulations and subject to satisfactory pre-employment checks.

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 CSWrecruitment@gloucestershire.gov.uk, 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:-

Advanced Practitioner Role 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.