Job summary
- Main area
- CYPMHS West
- Grade
- Band 7
- Contract
- Permanent
- Hours
- Full time - 37.5 hours per week
- Job ref
- 367-CYP-9675
- Employer
- Hertfordshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust
- Employer type
- NHS
- Site
- CYPMHS West, 99 Waverley Road, St Albans, AL3 5TL
- Town
- St Albans
- Salary
- per annum, pro rata (Inclusive of 5% HCAS)
- Closing
- 12/09/2025 23:59
Employer heading

Senior Social Worker Practitioner
Band 7
Values Based Screener
At Hertfordshire Partnership Foundation Trust we are looking for people to join us who share our values and those of the NHS. Before your application can be considered please take part on our online values questionnaire, which you can find below. When you have finished you will be sent a 'completion code' by email, which will be valid for 6 months and required to submit your application form.
Job overview
Are you an experienced Social Worker seeking promotion?
Do you want to work for an outstanding Trust?
CYPMHS West quadrant (St Albans and Hemel Hempstead) are seeking to recruit a Band 7 Social Worker Practitioner. The post holder will provide support to both teams St Albans and Hemel Hempstead.
You must hold a full valid driving licence and access to a car to use regularly for business purposes is essential (unless you have a disability as defined by the Equality Act 2010).
Main duties of the job
The successful candidate will:
- promote, lead and act in accordance with the principles of personalisation, working to promote wellbeing, and enabling individual’s rights to choice and control
- carry out assessments of need, plan and deliver services and review outcomes with the individual, their personal support networks and support providers
- ensure that practice within the team are responsive, inclusive and community based with a clear focus on outcomes and bring your professional expertise to your work with complex cases
- act as a champion and leader of social care within the locality/quadrant
- be a warranted AMHP (desirable) or open to consider training
- provide advice, support and supervision to other AMHPs.
- be professionally registered.
Working for our organisation
Hertfordshire Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust are one of just five mental health trusts to achieve an overall rating of ‘Outstanding’ from the Care Quality Commission.
Our family of over 4,000 members of staff provide health and social care for people with mental ill health, physical ill health and learning disabilities across Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Essex and Norfolk, delivering these services within the community and several inpatient settings. Everything is underpinned by choice, independence and equality, with our Trust values embedded throughout:
Welcoming. Kind. Positive. Respectful. Professional.
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
Job Summary:
All Senior Social Workers must be registered with the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC).
Senior Social Workers will promote, lead and act in accordance with the principles of personalisation, ensuring that they are working to promote wellbeing, and enabling individual’s rights to choice and control. In doing so they will carry out assessments of need, plan and deliver services and review outcomes with the individual, their personal support networks and support providers.
Senior Social Worker will ensure that practice within their teams is responsive, inclusive and community based with a clear focus on outcomes. They will bring their professional expertise to their work with complex cases and contribute their perspectives to the multi-disciplinary team.
As a Senior Social Worker you will act as a champion and leader of social care within a locality/quadrant. You will be expected to give robust, consistent expert social care practice advice in partnership with other specialist senior social care colleagues. You will reinforce the need to deliver high quality, cost effective social care services to service users and their carers focused on the principles of choice, control and independence, as well as ensuring their safety. You will have a small caseload of the most complex cases and, as an AMHP, you will provide advice, support and supervision to other AMHPs.
Partnership working is a key component of this post both within and outside the Trust and you will need to be innovative in ensuring that there is a range of appropriate services locally to support individual recovery journeys.
You will be expected to work in partnership with service users and carers so that they can be empowered, and services can be improved as a result of feedback of their experiences.
For a more detailed description, please see attached JD and PS.
Person specification
KNOWLEDGE & EXPERIENCE
Essential criteria
- An appropriate professional social work qualification
- Registration with General Social Care Council
- Education to degree level
- Masters Degree or equivalent training
- Approved Mental Health Professional training and qualification (or prepared to undertake training within a year of appointment)
- Relevant post-qualifying training for social workers
Desirable criteria
- Other post-qualifying training e.g. CBT, family therapy
- Best Interests Assessment training
AREAS OF EXPERIENCE
Essential criteria
- Stong post qualification experience with demonstrable evidence of excellent practice at a high level
- Extensive knowledge of legislation, statutory guidance, theory and policy in relation to relevant adult and children’s social care.
- Experience of undertaking assessments,focused as personalisation, choice and control, and care planning Understanding and experience of personal budgets and direct payments
- Experience of supervising and mentoring staff
- Experience of multidisciplinary working and evidence of collaborative work
- Experience of partnership working with service users and carers, demonstrating dignity and respect particularly in very challenging situations
- Experience of work as Approved Mental Health Professional.
Desirable criteria
- Experience of work as a Best Interests assessor
COMMUNICATION SKILLS
Essential criteria
- Excellent ability to communicate with a wide range of stakeholders including service users and carers, other professional colleagues, members of other organisations and local communities, verbally and in writing.
- Evidence of successful management of difficult meetings.
- Ability to manage highly sensitive information
- Experience of using electronic recording systems and ability to produce accurate, appropriate and timely reports
ANALYTICAL SKILLS
Essential criteria
- Ability to analyse service user and carer information.
- Experience of undertaking small scale audits and surveys.
Desirable criteria
- Understanding of basic research methods
DIVERSITY
Essential criteria
- Demonstrable ability to working sensitively with diverse needs and environments
- Commitment to anti-discriminatory practice
PHYSICAL SKILLS
Essential criteria
- Ability to visit and attend meetings at a variety of locations and environments Experience of using computer - PC
- literate to ECDL standard
- Able to travel between bases and offices, as required, using suitable mode of transport.
PHYSICAL EFFORT
Essential criteria
- Ability to meet timescales and respond to crises and appropriate
MENTAL EFFORT
Essential criteria
- Flexibility and ability to respond to a variety of tasks, and to prioritise own workload
- Ability to manage others and convey information which may be contentious sensitively so that it achieves required improvements and outcomes
EMOTIONAL EFFORT
Essential criteria
- Ability to deal with distressing and sometimes aggressive behaviour of service users, carers and colleagues
GENERAL
Essential criteria
- Experience of working in an integrated health and social care environment
Applicant requirements
You must have appropriate UK professional registration.
This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service.
Application numbers
Documents to download
Further details / informal visits contact
- Name
- Alex Marapara
- Job title
- CYPMHS West Operational Lead
- Email address
- [email protected]
- Telephone number
- 01727804214
- Additional information
Dominic Regan - Consultant Lead Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist
Email: [email protected] / Tel: 01727804214
Snehal Shah - Clinical Psychologist
Email: [email protected] / Tel: 01727804214
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