Medical Social Work jobs in England

Job Overview

Heal Care Group runs three children's homes for young people who have experienced developmental trauma. Over the past two years we have built something we are proud of: a care philosophy grounded in systemic practice, a bespoke outcomes measure we are building and rolling out across our homes, and a clinical model that shapes what happens in the homes every day rather than sitting in a folder.

We are now doing something most providers do not. We are putting a proper clinical function behind that model, and this is the first appointment into it. You would work alongside our Clinical Lead, a UKCP-registered systemic psychotherapist and clinical supervisor, and you would be shaping how this works rather than inheriting somebody else's version of it.

We are honest about what that means. Some of this role is direct work with children. Some of it is holding the thinking around a child so that the adults caring for them can do their job well. Some of it is writing, coordinating and chasing, because a child does not get an occupational therapy assessment or a school place just because somebody had a good idea in a meeting. All three matter, and we would rather say so now than pretend otherwise.

Direct work with children

• One-to-one therapeutic work with children living in our homes, at a pace they can manage and often not in a therapy room
• Working with a child to make sense of what has happened to them, and contributing to life story work alongside the child's social worker, who holds the family history
• Contributing to safety and behaviour planning, and to how the team responds after a difficult incident

Family and systemic work

• Planned work with parents, carers and siblings where a child's plan calls for it, from single sessions with a parent through to a sustained piece of family work, led or supervised by the Clinical Lead
• Helping the adults around a child, in the home and in the family, understand what the child's behaviour is communicating and respond to it consistently
• Non-Violent Resistance work with staff teams and, where it is agreed and appropriate, with parents
• Working alongside social workers, schools, CAMHS and health colleagues so that the plan around a child holds together

Supporting the teams around the children

• Delivering training built around the specific children we are caring for
• Holding reflective practice sessions with home teams, so that behaviour is understood as communication rather than defiance
• Being available to home managers who are carrying a lot and need somewhere to think

Assessment, formulation and reporting

• Gathering the information behind each child's clinical assessment: chronologies, previous placements, health and education records, and direct time with the child
• Drafting assessments and reports for the Clinical Lead to develop and sign off
• Writing the monthly clinical overview report for each home

Coordinating specialist input

• Commissioning and coordinating external therapists where a child needs something we do not provide in-house
• Chasing occupational therapy, CAMHS, neurodevelopmental and other specialist assessments, and following them through to a plan the team can actually use
• Preparing NHS and CAMHS co-funding applications for placing authorities

Evidence and outcomes

• Helping us build and embed our outcomes measure, so that over time every child has one that is genuinely bespoke to them and kept up to date in our care platform
• Turning that into the quarterly progress reviews we send to placing authorities
• Helping us improve the measure itself as we learn what it does and does not capture

Who we are looking for

We care far more about what you can do than about the setting you last did it in. If you meet most of the essentials and the rest of this sounds like you, please apply.

Essential

• Experience working therapeutically with children or young people affected by trauma, loss or disrupted care
• Comfortable with young people who did not choose to see you and may not want to engage yet
• Able to work alongside real risk, including self-harm and suicidal ideation, within a team and a safeguarding framework
• Confident written work: assessments, reports and records that other professionals will rely on
• Able to hold your own with social workers, CAMHS, schools and commissioners
• Able to travel independently between our three homes and out to meetings. For most people that means a full driving licence and use of a car
• Willing to work flexibly, including some late afternoons and occasional evenings, because that is when children are home and teams are on shift

Desirable

• A therapeutic, counselling or psychological qualification, and registration with a body such as BACP, UKCP, HCPC or PTUK
• Qualified systemic or family psychotherapy training. If you hold this, you would be considered at the upper end of the range and would be able to hold family work in your own right
• Systemic training or experience, at any level. This is the frame we work in and it is what makes us different
• Experience in children's residential care, fostering or a local authority children's service
• Familiarity with PACE and DDP, Bruce Perry's neurosequential model, or Non-Violent Resistance
• Experience of contributing to therapeutic life story work
• Experience of working with neurodivergent children

A note on qualifications. We have deliberately not set a fixed qualification bar. We would rather meet people and work out together what they can hold and what they would need supervision for. If you are unsure whether your background fits, apply and tell us about it.

What we offer, and why we think it is unusual

Supervision and mentoring you would normally pay for

You would be supervised by our Clinical Lead: a UKCP-registered systemic psychotherapist and clinical supervisor, accredited by the Association for Family Therapy and Systemic Practice. She was previously a course lead and tutor on an AFT-accredited systemic training course at an NHS Foundation Trust, is an external examiner for accredited systemic courses, and is a registered social worker with over fifteen years in children's social care.

For the right person, this is the part of the offer that matters most. Supervised practice hours, mentoring from someone with close connections to systemic academia, and a genuine route into systemic training, which we fund subject to a training agreement.

And the rest of it

• A funded training budget, with a clear route onto Foundation or Intermediate systemic training if that is where you want to go
• Your professional registration fees paid, so that staying registered is not something you fund yourself
• Being the first clinical appointment into a function that is being built, with real influence over how it works
• A model that is written down, taught, measured and actually used, rather than a value on a wall
• A small organisation where you will know every child by name and see the difference your work makes
• Company pension, enhanced leave, and mileage for travel between homes

How this role can grow

• As our enhanced outcomes programme grows, so does this function. We expect to add clinicians, and we would want the first person in to help shape it and eventually help lead it
• If you want to qualify further while working, say so at interview. We would rather build someone than replace them

Practical details

• Hours. Full time, worked flexibly. Time in the homes is the heart of this role, because that is where the children and the teams are, and because a clinician the team can actually reach is worth far more than one who is only available by email
• Protected time. You also get protected time for assessments, reports, meetings about the children and preparing training. We are saying this deliberately, because it is the part most employers leave vague: days in the homes are not admin days, and we do not expect you to absorb the paperwork in your evenings. We will agree the pattern with you before you start and keep it under review as the caseload settles
• Location. Our homes are in the West Midlands. Travel between them is part of the job and mileage is paid
• Reporting. You would report to the Chief Compliance Officer, with clinical supervisor provided by our Clinical Lead, who holds clinical governance for everything we do
• Checks. An enhanced DBS check with a children's barred list check, and satisfactory references, are required before starting

Pay: £42,000.00-£52,000.00 per year

Work Location: Hybrid remote in West Midlands Region