Senior Family Support Worker

This is a Gloucestershire County Council job.
 

• Job Title:                           Senior Family Support Worker
• Job Location:                     Shire Hall, The Link, Ground Floor 
• Salary:                              £37,280 - £40,777 per annum 
• Hours per Week:                37.00 
• Contract Type:                   Permanent                           
• Closing Date:                    02/08/2026 
• Job Requisition Number:    14522 
• This post is open to job share 

We are currently recruiting for Senior Family Support Worker to join our dedicated Turn Around for Children and the Family Drug & Alcohol Court (TACS)

Reward and Support

For all your hard work, you will receive the following:

• between £37,280 - £40,777 per annum subject to experience (pro rata for part-time staff)
• 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)

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 role 

Turn Around for Children and the Family Drug & Alcohol Court (TACS)

We are a multidisciplinary service of 15, we work out of Shire Hall (Barbican Wing) in Gloucester, but we cover the county.

We manage and deliver the problem-solving, collaborative court which is the Family Drug and Alcohol Court.  We work intensively and therapeutically with families who are in family proceedings who have addictions and other co-existing, such as poor wellbeing and physical health and whose intimate relationship are a cause of harm to children.

We are a flexible service, and we like to work together across disciplines, we deliver our interventions in our offices, in court, in homes, communities and schools.  You will work closely with social workers, health visitors and speech and language therapists, all of whom are in our service.

This vacancy is for a very important role in the Turn Around for Children Service, that of working with our children.  Ideally, we need someone who is an experienced Thrive assessor and can also deliver therapeutic Theraplay interventions with children, parents and carers.  We have a strong and relentless focus on building a child’s resilience to improve their life-long outcomes.

This is a unique opportunity and an innovative role.          

If you are interested in the role, not sure if you have the experience or skills, then we strongly advise that you contact Jane or Pat (details below) for an informal chat.  You can even visit us and have a closer look at what we do before you apply.

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 (Enhanced Adults and Children’s)
• To have completed your ASYE year (if you qualified after 2012)

How to apply

For an informal chat about this role, please contact Jane Marriott, Service Manager: jane.marriott@gloucestershire.gov.uk or

Pat Doherty, Senior Family Support Worker, Thrive Assessor: pat.doherty@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 in person  on 12th and 13th August 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 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:-

Senior Family Support Worker Job Profile

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.