Working with us

Our vision and focus

Our practice is driven by our vision that “Children and young people in Oldham are given the educational opportunities they deserve and enjoy a happy, healthy and safe childhood in their families”.

The service approach is to ensure local service delivery is focused on demands and needs. Co-production of service practice and support is important to ensure we are delivering what works for children and their families and is an integral part of our values and principles.

We believe in working smart, and provide you with tools, resources, research, and links that may be useful in your practice. This includes Research in Practice, a Dartington enterprise that supports social care professionals in their day-to-day work. Their work is grounded in the concept of evidence-informed practice, meaning they bring together academic research, practice expertise and the voice of people with lived experience to support professionals.

Our ethical belief is that our responsibility to children and families in need of help should start from the position that families are empowered and supported to make positive changes, enabled to make self-determined choices and seek their own solutions that build on existing strengths and resilience within the family network. Our firm resolve is to work relentlessly in supporting families to remain together and where a child’s needs require alternative living arrangements these will firstly be sought from within the child’s own family network.

Continuous improvement journey

Oldham Council Children’s Social Care Service is on a continuous improvement journey that reflects our values and learning culture focused on delivering high quality frontline practice with a skilled, compassionate, and stable workforce, embedding well managed mutual support and effective practice challenge.
Our social workers deliver effective frontline services that safeguard and promote the welfare of children and young people, and we are proud of the services we deliver for our children and young people who are looked after.

Visible Leadership

Opportunities to influence

Our Principal Social Worker holds a Social Work Forum which meets monthly and provides an opportunity for our social workers to meet informally and ensure their voice is heard. The social work forum is a positive development in Oldham, enabling our social workers to have an influential voice in practice and service improvement which has contributed to creating an environment in which staff can thrive and deliver excellence.

Effective management

As a social worker in Oldham, you will benefit from the expertise of an experienced management team, committed to holistic practice that is firmly embedded in research, in partnership with practitioners and service users.
All our managers have opportunities to access good quality training, delivered by our in-house training academy and through our partnerships with Research in Practice and Greater Manchester Social Work Academy and higher apprenticeship programmes.

This excellent training means managers gain a deep and systematic understanding of current knowledge about effective practice in leadership, management and supervision.

Health, well-being and work-life balance

We recognise the emotionally demanding nature of children’s social work and we are committed to supporting you to lead a healthy and balanced lifestyle.

We can offer you a choice of different working arrangements giving you the work-life balance you want.

As well as our overall staff well-being programme Fit for Oldham, we also offer bespoke social worker emotional well-being and resilience training and support, including training in and access to therapeutically informed group supervision.

As an organisation we promote staff well-being and would encourage you to take regular breaks, stop for lunch, finish work on time and take your full holiday entitlement.

The Employee Assistance Programme is available to support you through difficult times, with things like free counselling, financial or legal advice.

Apply now

We want the best professionals and you will be rewarded for your expertise – at a time when the council has made a significant investment in its Social Care workforce.

We are looking for experienced social workers that have the passion to make a difference to work within a range of teams in our service.