Family Support Practitioner for a Local Authority (F-T 35 hrs p/wk)

Description:

Care First Recruitment Ltd are currently seeking to recruit a dedicated and experienced ‘Family Support Practitioner/Worker’, to work for a London Local Authority with offices based in London’s Zone 2.

Early Help Family Support

Key responsibilities:

Offering help for families with children over five years old, within three locality

areas. This is an integrated offer within the locality, to enable children and families to reach their potential and to support local communities in order to build resilience and improve long term outcomes for all families within the Borough.

Each locality has a universal offer of help, providing a rapid response to families and wrapping around universal services to manage emerging needs as early as possible, as well as offering case holding interventions which are flexible to support families with multiple complex needs.

The Family Support Practitioner provides timely and flexible early help and family support to children, young people and parents/carers in families alongside outreach support practitioners in the Bright Futures teams. They work in partnership with families and engage informal and formal support networks in their communities to ensure lasting positive outcomes. They encourage resilience to enable families to build strong relationships and strategies to deal confidently with the ups and downs of parenting and family life.

1. Provide a flexible, graduated approach which responds to the identified needs of families. This will range from offering hands on practical help to intensive support to families in their homes at a variety of times including early morning, evenings or at weekends

2. Undertake the role of Lead Professional, co-ordinating the professional network through a Team around the Family and one whole family plan which is reviewed and adjusted regularly in order to meet the family’s continuing needs

3. Complete collaborative early help assessments and SMART family friendly action plans to address family needs and improve family functioning

4. Establish effective professional relationships with key partners such as health, employment services, targeted and specialist services, schools, housing and early years’ settings

5. Work in partnership with parents/carers to increase parental confidence and capacity, supporting healthy attachment and encouraging containing and nurturing relationships that promote child development

6. Contribute to the implementation, delivery and evaluation of evidence based early intervention practice models including parenting programmes in partnership with other professionals

7. Maintain accurate, up-to-date and succinct records that demonstrates work completed and progress towards outcomes

8. Help families to develop their resilience by maintaining an up to date knowledge of national and local resources available to families in their locality, including through the voluntary and community sector, faith based organisations, universal services such as play and youth and training and employment services

9. Deliver interventions that improve children’s outcomes such as encouraging the take up of early education provision for 2, 3 and 4 year olds; ensuring school attendance isa priority for children and young people; improving the management of health issues; reducing anti-social behaviour and offending; addressing the impact of domestic violence and abuse and providing support and guidance for families to enable them to progress to work or gain successful employment

10. To work in accordance with local and national child protection and safeguarding procedures and adhere to London Borough of Islington policies and procedures

11. Ensure that interventions are trauma informed and rooted in motivational practice, including participation in group and individual supervision, reflecting on practice, contributing to quality assurance and self-evaluation.

Resources and Financial management:

Ensure effective Financial Management, cost controls and income maximisation in an ever-changing environment, fluctuating demands and priorities. Ensure resources are well managed and effectively deployed to the best possible effects assuring value for money in all activities.

Compliance:

Ensure legal, regulatory and policy compliance under GDPR, Health and Safety and in area of your specialism identifying opportunities and risks and escalating where appropriate.

Budget responsibilities:

None

Work style:

Frontline Role

Person specification:

You should demonstrate on your application form how you meet the essential criteria. Please ensure that you address each of the criteria as this will be assessed to determine your suitability for the post.

Essential Criteria:

1. Minimum NVQ level 3 or equivalent level, in early years, family support, education, health, social care, play/youth work or similar, with post qualifying experience as a practitioner in a related fieldwork setting

2. Challenging inequalities: Demonstrable ability to recognise and address the impact of discriminatory factors such as class, income, gender, sexuality, lone parenting, disability, race and racism on children and families; and to engage with and support children and families and work with other professionals to address the discriminatory disadvantages families in Islington may face in accessing services such as education, employment and housing including the ability to adhere to the councils dignity for all policy

3. Relationships and effective direct work: An understanding of child development, trauma informed practice, and the family/environmental stressors that can have a detrimental impact on children reaching their full potential

4. Substantial experience in building purposeful relationships balancing empathy and authority in order to assess family needs, create family plans and deliver interventions that lead to improved family outcomes and longer-term resilience

5. Proven ability to work collaboratively with partner agencies to improve family outcomes including experience of coordinating professional networks around families, taking the role of lead professional where appropriate

6. Safeguarding: Able to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. Knowledge of relevant local and national safeguarding procedures and thresholds with experience of applying these to practice

7. Flexibility: Able to work independently and flexibly to enable service delivery to meet the needs of families, including at times and in venues that are accessible and convenient for families

8. Communication: Able to communicate clearly and effectively in writing, using IT skills to produce accurate written records using basic software packages and case work recording systems

9. This role will require you to obtain an Enhanced satisfactory clearance from the Disclosure and Barring Service

Special Requirements of the post:

1. Enhanced DBS certificate (absolutely essential for this role)

This advert covers main role requirements, but there may be additional tasks.

Salary: £21.90 per hour
Expected hours: 35 per week
Schedule: Monday to Friday (09:00-17:00)

Work Location: In person (hybrid option at the discretion of hiring manager)

Essentials:

* Very good levels of Literacy

* Able to understand and follow instructions & policies

* Able to use initiative

* Excellent organisational skills

* Good written/verbal communication skills

* Able to work as part of a team

* A non-discriminatory approach

Minimum of 2 years' Local Authority experience

An Enhanced DBS is needed for this role (criminal checks performed by the Disclosure and Barring Service). You can obtain one through our agency at the time of Registration if you do not currently have one