Adults and Health at Leeds City Council
Adults and Health at Leeds City Council
Our team
We are a passionate, friendly and inclusive team who work together every day for the people of Leeds, coordinating public health and social support services across the city.
We are recruiting to three leadership positions within our Social Work and Social Care team. Each is a pivotal role in shaping adult social care services to build a better future for vulnerable adults in Leeds.
We pride ourselves on our commitment to integrated working, partnership and collaboration, to learning and reflecting and keeping people at the heart of everything we do. Leeds has an established record of innovation, strengths and asset based working, and a commitment to working with the people and communities of Leeds.
Our teams are dedicated to ensuring every adult in Leeds can live a fulfilled, healthy life as independently as possible, safe from abuse and neglect. We support older people; people with mental health needs, sensory impairments, physical disabilities, or learning disabilities; and anyone else with care and support needs.
The Adults and Health directorate is one of five directorates across Leeds City Council. Our teams are spread across the areas of resources and strategy, social work and social care, health partnerships, transformation and innovation, integrated commissioning and public health.
Social Work and Social Care
Within social work and social care services our different teams share an overarching goal – better lives for people in Leeds with care and support needs.
We work collaboratively with individuals by drawing on their own strengths and assets to determine the best outcomes for them, that promote a good and fulfilling life. We also have a responsibility to protect people’s health, wellbeing and human rights and enable them to live free from harm, abuse and neglect.
Our new Early Intervention Team – which combines the expertise of occupational therapists and social workers – is proving successful in supporting people to be more independent. We have plans to improve our early help response through better use of falls prevention activity, closer working with communities and the development of a clear digital technology offer.
We have a clear practice framework that sets our commitment to working in a strengths based way with a commitment to anti-racist and anti-oppressive working. We chose to be one of 18 pilot authorities for the Social Care Workforce Race Equalities Standard, delivering an action plan in partnership with our children’s services colleagues and the support of the race equality staff network.
We have a commitment to strengths based and legally literate practice and have a dedicated team of senior social workers who support our safeguarding and risk management activity. This includes embedded work with the Leeds Street Support Team, working with housing colleagues, community safety and third sector organisations. Our neighbourhood teams are co-located with partners from Leeds Community Healthcare NHS Trust and we are well positioned to respond to the opportunities afforded us through neighbourhood health developments.
As a service we are increasingly building on each other’s strengths and heads of service are collaborating and co-producing innovative approaches such as reablement owned discharge. In its first year, this has saved social work capacity equivalent to two full-time workloads and enabled us to support more people on a smoother journey through the integrated active recovery offer that we deliver in partnership with Leeds Community Healthcare NHS Trust.
Our Team Leeds approach is key to delivering for people and communities. We can only achieve what we do through strong relationships with health, care and voluntary sector partners, especially as we face the dual challenges of increasingly complex care needs and a national funding crisis.