Quality Assurance and Improvement Officer - Senior Practitioner

• Are you a qualified and experienced social work practitioner (with at least 4 years post qualified)?
• Are you passionate about excellent outcomes for children, young people, and families?
• Do you have a flare for enabling the professional development of children services practitioners?
• Are you passionate about improving the quality of social work practice that children receive?
• Do you know what good looks like for children services?

Then we want to hear from you.

We are looking for SW Practitioners like you to join our Practice Hub within a permanent position to support our quality assurance and improvement activities across services, within the Trust and with partners.

Birmingham Children’s Trust is the largest children service provider in UK and Europe. The overall assurance position of our services to the city’s vulnerable children, young people, and families is GOOD. Rated 'Good' by Ofsted in 2023, our latest focused visit in 2024 highlighted the continued improvement with positive comments about our leaders and our social workers.

Quality assurance systems are being increasingly integrated across most Trust services. Regular practice evaluations, Trust Leadership Team (TLT) audits, thematic & diagnostic audits, and service audits are conducted. Managers and social workers appreciate the opportunity to reflect on their practice. The practice hub enhances practice evaluations by gathering direct feedback from children and families. Nevertheless, there is a need to increase both the number and frequency of these evaluations.  Nevertheless, there is a need to continually embed and engage managers in QA activities across the Trust.

We are looking for a Quality Assurance and Improvement Officer (Senior Practitioner) to support our commitment to continual service improvement.

The role will include undertaking and moderating practice evaluations, dip sampling, closing the loop, working alongside the research and QA specialist to analyse a range of complex information and data, link it to performance and practice, and delivering improvement activities using our excellent practice model.   

This is a hybrid role based in Birmingham so you must reside within a suitable commutable distance around Birmingham and have the correct right-to-work documents to work in the UK. Sadly, we do not support those who require sponsorship.

About you

We are looking for a dedicated and compassionate individual who is committed to making a difference. The ideal candidate will be social work qualified and is passionate about giving the children and young people of Birmingham the best start in life.  They will mentor and support others to recognise what good looks like, be professionally curious, apply relationship based and trauma informed practices to all aspects of work, have the ability to hold difficult conversations to improve practice, be enthusiastic, organised, and solution focused.  The candidate will be expected to attend a variety of meetings to share findings from quality assurance and improvement work, celebrate great practice, have excellent written skills, can develop and sustain effective working relationships with colleagues across the Trust and has good communication skills across multiple disciplines. 

We welcome applications from social workers or managers with extensive experience of auditing and practice improvement across the spectrum of children's social care.   You must have:

• A degree in Social Work and you must have completed your ASYE.
• Registration with Social Work England (SWE).
• Experience working with children and families in a social work setting for at least 4 years.
• Strong assessment and analytical skills.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills.
• The ability to work effectively as part of a team and independently.

Please note as part of our onboarding process, the successful candidate will be required undergo a series of background checks with Experian including Experian DBS, Experian Right to Work, and Digital ID verification. These are essential pre-employment requirements.