Independent Reviewing Officer

This role is only being offered as a secondment opportunity. If you wish to apply for this role on a secondment basis, you must seek your Managers agreement before formally applying. If you are formally at risk/on notice of redundancy, and are interested in this opportunity please contact your HR Advisor for a discussion.

Contract Type: 6 month Secondment

Contract Hours: 37 per week

Salary: Grade H4 £54,143 - £59,791 per annum

Closing date: 8th November 2026 at 23:59pm

This role is only being offered as a secondment opportunity. You will need to have Head of Service permission to apply for this post and be able to start at the beginning of January 2027 at the latest.

Are you committed to working with families with a strengths based approach?

We have got an exciting opportunity and looking for an Independent Reviewing Officer to join our stable and experienced service.   

You will be responsible for overseeing and reviewing the implementation of our children’s care plans, reviewing the quality of Children’s Social Care and partnership practice and providing solution focused feedback preventing children from experiencing drift in their plans.

You will possess exceptional written and verbal communication skills, a strong personal organisational capacity and have a proven ability to creatively engage with children, young people and their families and develop and maintain effective positive working relationships with other professionals and agencies.

Applicants must be a Qualified Social Worker (SWE registered) with a minimum of 5 years relevant experience in a statutory safeguarding children setting with significant experience in Children’s Social Care. 

If you have any questions or want an informal discussion about the role, we would love to hear from you.

Please contact Charlotte Kay, Service Manager, on 07767994983 or charlotte.kay@blackpool.gov.uk or Team Manager, Clare Riley Berry on 01253 476854 or clare.riley-berry@blackpool.gov.uk

Blackpool Children’s Services has been on an incredible journey, you could say it’s been a roller coaster!

We are now developing a reputation as a good place to practice social work, our ILAC report recognised that our service to children in our care is good.  We are now seeing the positive impact of the hard work undertaken, both for our workforce and for the children and families we serve.

Our services are stable and we have an experienced and committed stable senior leadership team under our DCS Vicky Gent .

Our shared sense of purpose is based upon the Blackpool Families Rock values, culture and practice principals and we are proud this was co-produced with Blackpool’s children, young people, their families and our partnership agencies.

Our staff care about Blackpool’s children and families, and we care about them.

We value that our staff are fully committed and often work above and beyond and in return we therefore offer a flexible approach to working including remote and home working and flexibility with working hours to allow you to meet your own family’s needs too.

What we offer

• Pay: our salary offer is strong and candidates who are recruited from the same or similar role may be eligible for a salary match within the above salary banding 
• Genuine flexible working: family-friendly patterns such as flexible start/finish times and state of the art technology support, so you can spend some time working from home.
• Small teams, clear line management and practice development support
• Caseloads: they’re manageable, varied and appropriate to your role. 
• Easy and regular access to the senior leadership team & Principal Social Worker
• Social Work England registration fee is paid
• 26 days’ annual leave (rising to 28 after 5 yrs & 32 days after 10 yrs) and the option to buy an additional 5 days on top of that, via salary sacrifice. 
• Encouragement to take your TOIL back – we mean it!
• Supervision: our strengthened supervision policy supports you to build a trusting relationship with your manager. 
• Leadership is ‘good’ and ‘stable’ – DfE apppinted Independent Commissioner.
• Career development is focused on supporting your development
• Blackpool Council Staff benefit scheme: Social Work Benefits and Diversity | Next Step Blackpool
• Employee Assistance Programme, to support you through challenging times e.g. with free counselling, financial or legal advice.
• Mental Health First Aiders that are here for you
• Principal Social Worker Best Practice Awards are our way of saying ‘thank you’ to our amazing and committed staff

Click here to view the Job Description.

Please click here to see the benefits of working for Blackpool Council.

Are you a Blackpool resident aged between 16-24? Would you benefit from some free guidance on producing a quality application for job vacancies such as this one? Blackpool Council?s Youth Hub - The Platform, has highly skilled Employment Advisers that can support you with demonstrating how you can evidence you meet the Essential and Desirable criteria requirements on a Job Description.

We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children/vulnerable adults. This post is subject to satisfactory reference history of at least two years, Disclosure & Barring Service (DBS) check, medical clearance, evidence of any essential qualifications and proof of Right to Work in the UK in accordance with the Asylum and Immigration Act 1996.

This post is exempt from the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act and amendments to the exemptions order, which mean that certain offences are ‘protected’ and do not need to be disclosed, guidance on the "filtering" of offences can be found at New filtering rules for DBS certificates (from 28 November 2020 onwards) - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

 

For further information on the health and wellbeing support on offer during your employment, please see here.

Have you got what it takes to ride the Roller Coaster ride of Social Work in Blackpool? for further information on the career path and development opportunities available at Blackpool please see here.