Social Care Officer

Kent County Council; England; Remote; GBP 24,000 - 32,000; Full time

Job summary

Kent County Council is seeking a Community Social Care Officer to provide efficient, proportionate, strengths-based support and information for new referrals from the public, partner agencies and other organisations across the West Kent area.

The role emphasises enabling independence, early collaboration, and working in partnership with community providers, with a commitment to flexible working patterns and a customer-facing service.

Job description

We are recruiting a Community Social Care Officer with a range of different skills and experience.

About Us

Adult Social Care Connect is the single point of access into Adult Social Care Services for all adults who are not currently supported by Adult Social Care in Kent. The service has a number of functions including the provision of information and advice, managing referrals into appropriate in-house enablement services, short term interventions, community services, through completing proportionate/initial social care assessments.

Our values are:

Think Independence and Enablement First
Make timely decisions to support people to remain as independent as possible using information and advice, new technology, equipment and referring to the Community Team for Care Needs Assessment when appropriate, and should the person require a direct payment to meet their eligible support needs; to empower people to live their own lives.

Make Practice Led Decisions
Having strengths-based conversations by working with people. People are experts in their own lives.

Keeping people close to their communities.

Strengthening existing relationships and supporting people to build new relationships whilst encouraging independence. Ensuring an enablement focused and a strengths-based approach is part of everything we do to help people to engage in activities that are important to them.

Our principles are:

For People to get the right support at the right time, through the principles of Prevent, Reduce, and Delay:

Prevent–To Promote the wellbeing of people we support, by providing information to help them link in with their communities and the activities that are important to them.

Reduce– Provide early collaboration to help people remain independent by providing equipment/adaptations, technology, or short-term services.

Delay– Support people to remain healthy so people can remain in their own homes and communities for as long as possible.

The role of a Social Care Officeris to provide efficient, proportionate, quality strengths-based, community-based solutions, support, and information for all new referrals from the public, partner agencies and other organisations.

This role provides vital support to the wider function, dealing with large volumes of enquire, ensuring referrals for the people we support, and requests are responded to efficiently and appropriately whilst working in partnership with key providers in the community and across Adult Social Care, to enable the people we support to access local services and life as independently as possible.

This vacancy is for the West Kent Adult Social Care Connect Team where we support adults, who live within the West Kent area and are not already known to the community adult social care teams.

Our Support Offer

In return, we offer an attractive benefits package and a commitment to ensuring that you achieve a healthy work life balance and opportunities for flexible working arrangements that meet business need.

You will have excellent opportunities for professional development with access to our social care academy, progression routes that include opportunities to undertake the social work apprenticeship, and our newly launched practice framework.

We are increasingly accessible to the public outside of traditional office hours, as we move towards an 8 am to 8 pm, 7 days a week service to ensure service needs are met.

This post is subject to an Enhanced Disclosure application to the Disclosure and Barring service.

This post is considered by KCC to be a customer-facing position. The Council therefore has a statutory duty under Part 7 of the Immigration Act (2016) to ensure that post holders have a command of spoken English/Welsh sufficient for the effective performance of the job requirements. The appropriate standards are set out in the Job Description/Person Specification.

For more information about the role, please contact:

Work that works for you and us - let's talk flexibility!

KCC is committed to building a workforce which reflects the diversity of the county's working residents, encouraging applications from people of all ages, abilities, genders, sexual orientations, ethnic backgrounds, faiths and those with caring responsibilities, and aspires to create an inclusive workplace where everyone can be themselves at work.