Emergency Duty Team

The team provide a service for adults, children, young people and families who need urgent support and/or safeguarding.

• Being the point of contact for emergency services requiring information from Social Care
• Managing urgent incoming enquiries by phone and email, signposting where appropriate
• Following up urgent case work from Social Work Teams, where the work cannot wait until the next day, for example holding strategy discussions, S47 visits in line with GCC safeguarding procedures
• Carrying out visits that cannot wait until the next day
• Maintaining a clear record of referrals and the actions taken (or not taken) out of hours, including rationale
• Build safety for children and adults primarily within their family and community networks through support and de-escalation of crisis situations
• Responding to serious concern for the welfare of a child/young person or a vulnerable adult
• Working with child/young person placed under Police Power of Protection
• Provide a service to child/young person or an adult who may require emergency accommodation
• Keep a record of missing children/young people, those at risk of CSE, CCE and following the GCC safeguarding procedures
• Working with adults who are vulnerable
• Supporting domestic violence victims where children are involved
• Provide Children/Adults /Young People with urgent advice
• Working with families facing serious difficulties with their children and at risk of being accommodated
• Participation in a duty rota covering the periods out of office hours, evenings, weekends and Bank Holidays

Where we are based

The team are based on the Ground Floor, The Link, Shire Hall, Barbican Road, Gloucester.GL1 2TG

There is a worker in the office from 16:30 to 0030 hours weekdays and daytime during the weekend. We are co-located with the Edge of Care team (EOC)

Our night shift from1700 hours to 0900 is currently worked from home.

Who we are

·  We have:

• An interim team manager
• Six full-time senior social workers
• One part-time senior social worker

All social workers are very experienced and mostly work independently and have the ability to respond appropriately to crisis situations.

Skills you'll need

• Effective communication skills both writing and oral. You will be required to write emails, brief assessments/reports and other forms of communication on behalf of GCC. Your documentation should reflect the way you do.
• Active listener that can review shared information to provide sound interventions.
• Leadership qualities including ability to empower, empathise and advocate for clients.
• Emotional intelligence- being able to balance own intuition and application of professional knowledge in decision making.
• Boundary Setting, understanding the environment we work under and having an ability to prioritise and signpost as necessary.
• Critical thinking, being able to objectively analyse each situation, reflect and then deciding.
• Problem solver- using empathy, understanding human relationships and active listening to come up with successful resolutions.
• Time management, flexibility and ability to prioritise task at hand for example child protection always take precedence.

Accountability behaviours:

• We encourage and support each other to do the right thing even when it’s tough and we communicate our decisions in a timely way.
• We ensure our team take individual and collective accountability for performance and delivery, making sure that they have clear plans and performance objectives. 
• We plan, getting the basics right and take swift action when problems arise.
• We encourage the team to be risk aware and ensuring that our decisions and actions are informed and understood and communicated to others.
• The team manager provides regular, timely and constructive feedback to team members on their performance and behaviours and act quickly when performance is not on track.
• We share our learning, knowledge and skills with others through coaching and mentoring and
• encourage others to do the same.
• We ensure that we put children, vulnerable adults, communities, customers and their needs at the centre of everything we do.
• We encourage each other to learn and grow and ask questions to find the information we need to do our job.

Why you should join us

Here's what colleagues say about us:

"special thanks to the EDT person who went out to Mr T to ensure his wellbeing"
MW (ASC)

 "Team members have a significant amount of experience in all areas - Children's Services, Adult Services, Mental Health. It's a small team, it's a very supportive team, team members look after each other. There is no case management. Working out of hours enables a better level of balancing work/home life."
PC ( EDT SSW)

"We are a small, diverse team that prides in teamwork, support for each other and especially for our new starters. There is wide child and adult safeguarding experience within the team including an AMHP to offer advise on mental health cases. Like our colleagues in day teams, we also work to the GCC hybrid model which offers flexibility in home and office working"
BN (EDT SSW)

The team working patterns:

EDT is a small countywide team, comprising of one team manager and 6.5 Senior Social Workers who work an out of hours rota. We have two social workers on shift every weekday evening, one working 16:30 to 00:30, the other working 17:00 to 09:00. Weekends and bank holidays we have two social workers during the day, one from 09:00 to 21:00 and the other from 11:00 to 223:00. On a Saturday and Sunday, this is supported by a night shift who work 17:00 to 09:00.

We are a small and inclusive team; we are available and willing to meet with you face to face or have a discussion by phone or team’s call.  We respond to email enquiries about our service and would encourage you to contact us if you have any queries about our service.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Get in touch

We'd love to tell you more!

✉ Email: CSWrecruitment@gloucestershire.gov.uk