Experienced social workers

Become a Consultant Social Worker

Progress your social work career

  • Join a movement of leaders promoting and strengthening mental health social work.
  • Lead a unit of talented Think Ahead trainees.
  • Develop your skills in practice, supervision, and education.
  • Get fully funded training, including a Postgraduate Certificate in Advanced Social Work from Middlesex University.

Role

Consultant Social Workers are employed by our training partners (NHS trusts and local authorities) to lead and develop our first-year trainees. It’s a full-time position, managing a unit of four to six trainees placed in an adult mental health service. You retain a frontline role, sharing a mixed caseload across the unit, acting as their leader and role model.

You will work intensively with trainees to provide practice education of outstanding quality, enabling them to take increasing responsibility for the unit caseload as they progress. Working with an academic tutor, you will assess their ability to put social work theories, interventions, and legislation into practice.

Visit our programme pages to find out more about the training programme.

Benefits

Becoming a Consultant Social Worker is an opportunity to progress your social work career.

To equip you for the role, we will provide a tailored, fully funded and accredited training course. This will consolidate and develop your expertise in evidence-based interventions, advanced supervision, and practice education. If you do not already hold the Practice Educator Stages 1 and 2 qualification, you will receive additional training and be awarded a Postgraduate Certificate in Advanced Social Work from Middlesex University.

Most employers will also offer a salary enhancement, although this varies from organisation to organisation.

Requirements

You need to be a registered social worker with significant experience of promoting recovery in community mental health services. You will also need the enthusiasm, confidence, and authority to inspire others.

You do not need previous experience as a Practice Educator (training is provided).

Find out about potential opportunities in your area

Consultant Social Worker vacancies are advertised by the NHS trusts and local authorities that host our trainees, typically as one-year secondments or fixed-term contracts. We’re in discussion with training partners all the time, so even if we don’t seem to be working in your area it’s still worth contacting us about potential openings.

Ask us about opportunities in your area

 

Become a Practice Specialist

Think Ahead employs Practice Specialists – experienced social workers who work with our training partners to ensure effective local delivery of our programme.

We are not recruiting for anyone currently but full details will always be listed on our jobs page.