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Social Care Worker - Practitioners - Adult Services – Supported Living and Outreach

Social Care Worker Practitioners are responsible for providing direct support to individuals and the team in a variety of settings including individuals’ own home or supported tenancy, within a Care Inspectorate registered service, and in the community, enabling the individual to achieve their goals, identified priorities and personal outcomes.

The nature of this role allows individuals to apply with or without the required qualification. If you do not currently have the SVQ3 required to meet the SSSC registration requirement, you are still welcome to apply, but will be required to achieve the qualification once in the role.

Supported Living & Outreach – what we do:

Supported Living & Outreach (SLO) is a registered Housing Support and Care at Home service that sits within the Adult Services department of Community Health and Social Care Directorate. The service follows guidance from the Scottish Government’s Keys to Life Strategy, Health and Social Care Standards (My Support, My Life) and Fairer Scotland Action Plan; with a focus on promoting choice and control and independent living through a healthy life, active citizenship, and inclusion. The service is registered with the SSSC and staff are required to register and adhere to codes of conduct and registration.

In addition to learning and physical disability and/or complex need, individuals we support may have, emotional and social needs with associated behavioural challenges, requiring compassionate support to understand, prepare for and manage independent living. We support individual with many different physical and learning disabilities, some knowledge in the following disabilities would be advantageous:

Cerebral Palsy
Visual Impairment
Multiple Sclerosis
Epilepsy
Dementia

The service delivers a local provision of supported tenancies and outreach support for people who have learning disabilities and complex needs. At the core of our service is the belief in inclusion and relationships that enable meaningful connections to family, friends and the wider community. The fundamental outcome of the service is to promote independent living, meet needs and work together to enable a life of choices, opportunities and participation. This work is very rewarding.

The purpose of the role is to provide person centred care, individualised support, skills building and whole life learning to people with a range of needs using assets based approaches.

In addition to learning disability and/or complex need, users of the service may have emotional, learning, social issues and associated behavioural challenges requiring enhanced support to understand, prepare for and manage life transitions.

Working within the SL+O team will be very physically and emotionally demanding and a high level of personal resilience and strength is essential. Support activities may include:

A set of core strength based approaches, practice and values would be essential in supporting the people who use the service including: Passion, drive, commitment, unconditional positive regard, trust, patience, resilience, innovative thinking and understanding.

What you’ll be doing:

As a Social Care Worker – Practitioner in Supported Living and Outreach:

You will be responsible for providing direct support to individuals in a variety of settings.
You will play a key role ensuring that individuals receive high standards of care and support to help retain their potential level of independence and dignity throughout their lives.
You will support people with varying abilities and complex needs, enabling them to achieve their goals, identified priorities and personal outcomes.
You will work as part of a team to provide the highest quality of care. This may include; intimate personal care, developing daily living skills, training, social activities and other meaningful activity in accordance with their identified needs and wishes, whilst supporting individuals, as far as possible, to avoid danger and harm.
You must evidence that you can demonstrate the Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC) core values of;

Respect
Collaboration,
Participation & Dignity and Empowerment

What’s in it for you? Following a review of responsibilities and reward for social care worker roles across Council services, it was recognised that an uplift in salary was required. In this respect, you’ll be undertaking valuable work in more than one way! Your benefit package includes:

Excellent Salary and Conditions
Distant islands allowance
Generous holiday allowance
Local Government Pension scheme
Flexible working and family friendly policies
A varied and interesting workload
Excellent training and development opportunities
Various other employee benefits

Do you share our values?

In Shetland Islands Council, Excellent service is at the heart of everything we do. We provide excellent service by taking personal responsibility and working well together.

It is important that you share our values and would demonstrate this by:

Providing an excellent level of service, by making sure you understand, meet and manage our service users’ needs.
Working in an open and honest way, reflecting on your performance and looking for opportunities to improve and develop.
Having a positive attitude by being open-minded, fair, respectful, trustworthy and honest.
Taking your responsibilities as an employee of the council seriously.

Social Care Worker - Practitioners shall provide care in a variety of settings including within the community. Therefore the worker will, in the majority of cases, be required to travel to undertake their duties. An ability to drive with a full driving licence is therefore highly desirable and may be essential depending on the demands of the service. The travel requirements of each post will be made clear through the recruitment & selection process.

Above all else we’re looking for someone who’s compassionate, respectful, empathetic and honest, with a values and integrity to make a very real and positive difference to the people we support.

Find out more about:

Social Care careers in Shetland: here
Values for a career in Social Care: here
Living and working in Shetland: here
The Shetland Islands Council: here

Additional Information

More detail is provided in the Job Profile, Person Specification and Conditions of Service Summary attached to the bottom of this advert.

The grade of this post is I
Rate of pay shown in the advert is inclusive of Distant Islands Allowance of £1.4202 per hour
2 x Permanent Part Time posts for 28-35 hpw, 52.18 weeks per year
1 x Temporary Part Time post for 28 hpw, 52.18 weeks per year. Temporary contract for a period of approximately 12 months. This is for the duration of a period of family leave, and will terminate following the return to work or resignation of the postholder
Preferred candidates will be required to join the Protecting Vulnerable Groups (PVG) Scheme or undergo a PVG Scheme update prior to a formal offer of employment being made
The successful candidate will have to complete registration with the Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC) within 6 months of the agreed start date
A relocation package does not apply to this post
You must have the ability to travel throughout Shetland at short notice and where public transport is limited
We will pay interview expenses from within Shetland
We are happy to talk flexible working

During the application process you are required to give the names of two persons not related to you, who we can contact to provide a reference to support your application.

This post is based at Supported Living & Outreach, Lerwick, Shetland.

For further details relating to this post, please contact: Diane Colvin, Team Leader, Telephone 01595 744306 or email diane.colvin@shetland.gov.uk

If you have a disability which prevents you from applying online, please call 01595 744032.