Stockport Family brings together health, social care and education services for children and their families from early years through to early adulthood in one integrated service. We have shared priorities, vision and values to ensure that we are all working ambitiously to achieve the best possible outcomes.
Rebecca
Director for Children's Social Care
As a social worker within Stockport Family, you’ll make sure children and families get the help and support they need at the earliest opportunity by working with:
- health visitors
- school nurses
- midwives
- early years professionals
- early help workers
- teachers
- education staff
We've adopted a model of Restorative Practice in Stockport. This means we work in collaboration with children, families and each other to:
- enable positive and sustained change
- help families to overcome difficulties
- repair harm
- achieve the best possible outcomes
We aim for children and families to have just one social worker whilst they are in Stockport Family. Social workers gain great satisfaction from being a consistent professional in a child and family’s life. Working in this way also offers excellent opportunities for you to build your knowledge and skills.
Relationships are at the heart of everything we do!
Values and relationships between different services and roles are central to our practice. We’ve learnt that these relationships matter to the children and families we work with and to our teams and services. The main principles that form our practice and values in Stockport Family are:
- connection
- compassion
- curiosity
We aim to create a restorative culture through:
- a bespoke training programme for Social Care, Education, Health, Police and other colleagues across Stockport Family. This supports shared learning and builds relationships and community across services and disciplines
- social work teams sitting alongside colleagues from different disciplines and more recently within our schools
- approachable and supportive leadership, that listens to and delivers action alongside our workforce. There are regular opportunities to engage with leadership to share and receive feedback
- learning circles, which are regular short learning opportunities offered by many colleagues across Stockport Family
We use knowledge and tools from a range of approaches that complement restorative practice including:
- Systemic
- Solihull
- Trauma informed
- Co-production
We have an extensive training programme available for Stockport Family employees to develop their skills in each of these approaches. For those wishing to develop their skills to an advanced level, we offer places on an accredited Systemic Practice course at foundation level.
Stockport Family Social Work Academy
The pandemic had a significant impact on training opportunities for newly qualified social workers. In recognition of this and the need to offer enhanced support, we launched our Stockport Family Social Work Academy in 2022.
This makes sure social workers receive support to learn, develop and thrive at every stage of their career.
We’re proud of our 2-year in-house programme that supports our newly qualified social workers (NQSWs).
The Assessed and Supported Year in Employment (ASYE) programme
This programme offers support to NQSWs in their first year of practice, alongside providing the framework for assessment and quality assurance. In addition to support from teams and regular supervision from Team Leaders, the following programme is in place to develop the practice, knowledge, and skills of our NQSWs:
- a dedicated ASYE Coordinator
- an experienced ASYE Reflective Mentor
- a rolling annual programme of 15 ASYE practice development sessions
- monthly face to face group support and reflection
- protected study time
The Second Supported Year in Employment (SSYE) programme
We recognise that enhanced support should continue for social workers to thrive beyond their first year. In addition to the support from your team and regular supervision from your Team Leader, the following programme is offered to continue to develop your social work knowledge and skills:
- continued support and mentoring from your ASYE Coordinator (now SSYE Coordinator)
- 1 to 1 reflective supervision on request
- bi-monthly systemic group supervision
- a review meeting with your Team Leader and SSYE Coordinator
- opportunities for direct observation of practice, followed by feedback
- practice development sessions
Search our dedicated online jobs site for our current vacancies.
Find out more about our offers and the benefits of working with us.