It has 6 locality bases:
- High Peak and North Dales
- North East and Bolsover
- Chesterfield
- Amber Valley
- Erewash
- South Derbyshire South Dales
With numerous offices base locations including Glossop, Buxton, Clay Cross, Eckington, Clowne, Ripley, Chesterfield, Ilkeston, Swadlincote and Etwall. We also have a specialist disabled children's service which covers the whole of the county with an office base in Alfreton.
In each locality we have several small social work teams, working with children and their families and carers.
These teams are made up of 5 to 6 social workers, one to 2 community care workers (non-social work qualified practitioners), a team co-ordinator (providing business services support) and a practice supervisor (an experienced social worker providing reflective case supervision and practice support).
One team in each locality is a dedicated children in care team. Each locality also has several experienced team managers and a head of service (all registered social workers) providing quality oversight, management, and leadership.
Supporting qualifying routes for social workers
Across Derbyshire we are committed to enabling the learning of others and provide placements and support to many social work students from a variety of qualifying routes.
Every year we support around 100 social work students as they qualify. As well as providing placements to students from the more traditional university routes into social work we also work with several national programmes and provide opportunities for social work apprentices.
As part of a regional group of local authorities we host participants with the frontline programme. These programme requires applicants to already have a degree (2:1 or above) and are fast-tracked and government funded.
In 2020 we were able to provide opportunities for our first cohort of social work apprentices. Currently our offer is to our existing workforce as a grow-our-own option, giving opportunities to some of our non-social work qualified staff to further develop their career with us.
Supporting students also provides additional opportunities for our social workers to develop leadership, practice skills and knowledge and to become trained as practice educators.