About Us

Social work in Essex

Essex is the second largest county in England, with 1.4 million residents and a number of large towns, including Colchester, Basildon and Southend. To cater for the vast size of the county population, we have recently restructured our services into four quadrants: North, South, Mid and West. This means that there are specific teams for each area, each offering a full service within their quadrant.

We offer a diverse range of careers across the county in the following teams:

Assessment & Intervention

Dealing with all referrals, we conduct initial assessments and section 47 Child Protection investigations. Holding all open cases of ongoing family support and children subject to a child protection plan, we initiate care proceedings and are responsible for the initial care planning of children when they first become looked after.

Family Support & Protection

Our Family Support teams offer family advice and joint investigations with the police into child protection concerns. We aim to protect and promote the welfare of children by offering information, advice and practical support to families; undertaking work to place children who cannot live at home in foster care, adoption services and residential accommodation; protecting children at risk of abuse or neglect and working with Youth Offending Service to help young people in trouble with the law.

Leaving & After Care Teams

Truly pioneering in our approach, we make a real, measurable different to the lives of young people aged between 15 to 24 who have left care or living in one of our internal residential homes or foster placements or are placed in a non-county provision. We offer advice, information and assistance to enable young people to live independently and assist them into education, training and employment.

Children & Care

Our teams provide social work services to children aged 15 and under who are looked after by Essex Children’s Social Care. The service includes regular social worker visits, assessments of needs, placement reviews in line with government guidance, Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services, health and education support. There are 14 teams in Essex that cover different areas.

Family Centres

We provide walk-in family centres across the county to offer families support and advice.

Fostering & Adoption

Recruiting and supporting adoptive and foster parents, we match children to families and provide continual support.

Children with Disabilities

Our teams working with children with disabilities are extremely sophisticated in their approach to multi agency working; providing children and families with creative care packaging and sourcing excellent short breaks care.

Performance & Policy Safeguarding

Our Safeguarding service has strong links with the Safeguarding Board, and works across the entire Children’s Workforce in Essex to support staff with safeguarding responsibilities; deals with allegations against adults working with children and carries out specific functions with regards to licensing, completing checks on individuals and contributing to the processes by which dangerous individuals are monitored in the community with other agencies.