Advanced Practitioner – Family Safeguarding
Devon County Council
Children’s Services
£46.00 per hour
Locum Contract | Full-Time | Hybrid Working
£150 per week accommodation/travel allowance 

Devon County Council is looking for a skilled and confident Advanced Practitioner to join their Family Safeguarding Service on a locum basis. This is a hybrid role with a mix of in-office and remote working, and an additional £150 per week to help with accommodation or travel costs.

If you're looking for a supportive, multi-disciplinary environment where relationship-based practice is at the heart of everything, this is a strong opportunity to join a forward-thinking local authority.

About the Family Safeguarding Model in Devon

Devon’s Family Safeguarding approach is designed to keep families together wherever it’s safe to do so, reducing the need for care proceedings and improving long-term outcomes for children. The model is based on motivational interviewing, collaborative working, and integrating specialist adult-focused workers (such as domestic abuse, mental health, and substance misuse practitioners) into children’s social work teams. The aim is to build resilience, improve parenting capacity, and strengthen family networks.

Your Role as an Advanced Practitioner

As an Advanced Practitioner, you will hold a reduced caseload of complex cases while also offering high-quality support and oversight to less experienced social workers in the team. This is a pivotal role in embedding good practice and ensuring that families receive timely, consistent, and effective interventions.

Your responsibilities will include:

• Holding complex safeguarding cases, including those subject to Child in Need and Child Protection plans, and in some instances pre-proceedings work
• Supporting other team members through co-working, mentoring and reflective supervision
• Providing expert guidance on thresholds, risk management, and intervention planning
• Promoting the use of motivational interviewing techniques across the team and modelling effective engagement strategies with families
• Chairing multi-agency meetings when required and maintaining strong links with partner services, particularly adult specialist workers integrated within the Family Safeguarding model
• Supporting audits and contributing to service learning and improvement
• Acting as a role model for professional curiosity, high-quality recording, and strength-based planning

What You’ll Need

• Qualified Social Worker with Social Work England registration
• Strong post-qualifying experience in statutory children’s services, ideally within safeguarding or child protection
• A sound understanding of the Family Safeguarding model and confidence using motivational interviewing
• Ability to lead, coach and constructively challenge colleagues to ensure practice is safe, purposeful, and reflective
• Confidence in managing risk and supporting families with multiple and complex needs

For more information or to apply, contact Maddie Billingham:

Referral bonus of up to £500 available for successful recommendations.