![]() On Thursday 11th July, teams from across Fair Ways gathered at Lakeside North Harbour to attend our annual summer festival, Fair Ways Fest. Originating in 2017, Fair Ways Fest is an outdoor fete for all Fair Ways team members and individuals we support. It has grown to become a staple of our events calendar and is widely viewed as a key opportunity to ingrain Fair Ways culture with socialising, live music, free entertainment and lots of laughter in the sun. 2024 Fair Ways Fest was the largest to date, with lots of inflatable games, a live band, a petting zoo, face painting, free food and ice cream and a special visit from a local Hampshire and Isle of Wight fire engine. Click here for the full article ![]() Location: Lordshill, Southampton Salary: £30,126 - £38,272 Contract Type: Full time Specific Hours: 37.5 hours per week Closing Date: 27 June 2024 Who are Fair Ways and what do we stand for?
Fair Ways is a leading children’s services charity based in the Solent, delivering Fostering, Education, Residential, Mental Health and Family services and cares for over 400 children, families, young people and vulnerable adults each year. Fair Ways is a great place to work. We are a team. We care about each other and are all committed to making a change to the lives of everyone in our care. We will not apologise for calling our staff great, the best, or world-class. Our staff are at the core of our organisation and we celebrate them by shouting it from the rooftops! Where and when do we need you? We are looking for a Social Worker to support the growth and development of our Registered Family Centre in Southampton. The Family Centre is made up of 5 self-contained flats each with their own bathroom and kitchen facilities and a separate bungalow which can accommodate an additional 2 families. Families will be referred to the Family Centre if there have been concerns identified around the safety of the children within their existing family unit. Once with us, the families will be continuously encouraged, assessed and guided through a 12 week stay where they are monitored 24/7 to encourage sustainable positive parenting changes. As a Social Worker with Fair Ways you will deliver the highest standards of care and support to our children, families and vulnerable adults through:
![]() We are delighted to share that Fair Ways has been awarded the Best Employee Development Programme (In-house) Award at the 2024 UK Company Culture Awards. This was the second consecutive year Fair Ways was shortlisted for the Best Employee Development Programme of the Year for our RiiSE programme, finishing as highly commended in 2023, and the ultimate winner in 2024. Fair Ways has always sought to deal with the most distressed and vulnerable children, to provide stable placements and provide world-class care and support. We are delighted that our RiiSE training programme has become recognised as the benchmark for the development of knowledge and skills for people to understand the effects of exposure to various forms of childhood adversity, abuse, neglect, violence and other problematic behaviours as methods for coping with that adversity.
Our people are the standard bearers for care, compassion, strong values and therapeutic principles, and RiiSE is the golden thread that is woven through the organisation that continues to deepen and unfold over time ![]() Fair Ways is reporting the annual Gender Pay Gap (GPG) figures. In Fair Ways there is a Gender Pay Gap due to more men being in more senior positions, however, in 2023/24 the GPG decreased on the previous year. Typically, a Gender Pay Gap arises as there are more men in senior positions, however as part of Fair Ways longer-term strategy, more females are being promoted to senior positions in Fair Ways. Currently, our Operations Board has 2 women and 6 men, however, the next most senior level; the Senior Leaders team, is now 70% women. Also, the Trustee board is now a 50 / 50 gender split, however as Trustees are not paid, they are not reflected in the GPG figures. Seeing women in higher positions is something Fair Ways does aspire to and shows that the company does promote females. Fair Ways has an equal pay policy where men and women are paid equally for the same role. Read the full report here www.fairways.co/ ![]() We are pleased to release the 2023 Fair Ways Impact Report. Each year, we produce an Annual Impact Report, covering our activities in the year, including stories from across our charity and how we impact the individuals we support. This latest report shows what we are achieving across the Fair Ways community and shows what a vibrant and passionate organisation we are. Click here to read it now ![]() Location: Lordshill, Southampton Salary: £30,126 - £38,272 Contract Type: Full time Specific Hours: 37.5 hours per week Closing Date: 30 April 2024 Who are Fair Ways and what do we stand for?
Fair Ways is a leading children’s services charity based in the Solent, delivering Fostering, Education, Residential, Mental Health and Family services and cares for over 400 children, families, young people and vulnerable adults each year. Fair Ways is a great place to work. We are a team. We care about each other and are all committed to making a change to the lives of everyone in our care. We will not apologise for calling our staff great, the best, or world-class. Our staff are at the core of our organisation and we celebrate them by shouting it from the rooftops! Where and when do we need you? We are looking for a Social Worker to support the growth and development of our Registered Family Centre in Southampton. The Family Centre is made up of 5 self-contained flats each with their own bathroom and kitchen facilities and a separate bungalow which can accommodate an additional 2 families. Families will be referred to the Family Centre if there have been concerns identified around the safety of the children within their existing family unit. Once with us, the families will be continuously encouraged, assessed and guided through a 12 week stay where they are monitored 24/7 to encourage sustainable positive parenting changes. As a Social Worker with Fair Ways you will deliver the highest standards of care and support to our children, families and vulnerable adults through:
Further details and application documents here ![]() One of the areas of Fair Ways’ 5-year strategy was to review our Corporate Identity. It’s important to do this regularly as all organisations undergo change, and Fair Ways has certainly seen significant changes in the past few years. Our most visible change is that we are now a charity, ensuring we reinvest all our surplus funds into the organisation. We are on the way to becoming a trauma-informed organisation. We are larger than before with circa 420 employees, and we deliver more and better services to more individuals than we did 5 years ago. Some areas remain unchanged. Our values remain constant, our culture remains strong and our belief in the fundamentals of care, education & training and employee support is unwavering. Over the past year, a working group from across Fair Ways has reviewed our identity and any required changes. This group recently presented three key recommendations to the Board, which were approved as follows:
Vision To build a community that changes lives, makes a difference to society, and leaves a legacy greater than ourselves and our contributions. Mission To grow a compassionate, resilient, and trauma-informed community, that embraces learning, so that we improve the lives and outcomes of individuals. These statements are agreed upon by the CEO and MD. The working group advised that the existing Vision statement term ‘institution’ was viewed negatively and that the term ‘Community’ was much more reflective of who we are and represents our charitable status as a Community Benefit Society. A typical mission statement describes how an organisation gets to its vision. The working group recommended greater detail was required in our mission statement. As a result, the CEO and MD have restated the Vision and Mission statements for Fair Ways as above. Going forward, these statements will now be used across our website, our policies, training and marketing materials, and guide our strategic planning processes. The working group has identified that new team members can be put off by the scale of Fair Ways services and the many terms we use. It also identified that employees can struggle to clearly articulate what we do, but also that there are terms that we commonly use that are not found elsewhere. In fact, there is a shared language that is very much part of our identity. Examples are found throughout PRINT and RiiSE.
Going forward, we will now gather this language and introduce it in our Induction courses, our Management and other training, and incorporate it into Policies and other communications. Later this year we will launch the first list of commonly used terms and offer all employees the opportunity to add to this Fair Ways language as we go forwards. Source: www.fairways.co/ ![]() The main reason many people foster with an agency over the Local authority is the better levels of support that agencies can provide. The fostering network states “The level of support – especially practical – is often higher with an agency than an LA. They have a better ratio of supervising social workers to foster carers so one is usually available to step in, if necessary, in an emergency and offer hands-on support, for example, by collecting a child from school” At Fair Ways, we find not only does fostering with an agency mean the practical support is better but also the emotional support is improved, due to the better relationships the Supervising Social Workers can build with the foster carers, their families and the young people in their care. These relationships are generally better with Supervising social workers due to them having a lower case load ratio and agencies having better staff retention rates. Fostering with an agency also means we work with a number of local authorities not just one. This improves the matching process to ensure the best compatibility with your family and birth children or any other foster children you may be already looking after. Although allowances vary, agencies do generally pay their foster carers a higher allowance than the local authorities. At Fair Ways, we know foster carers are financially better off fostering with us than the 5 main local authorities in our area. Source: www.fairways.co/ ![]() The Hub is an example of how Fair Ways reinvests its surplus back into the charity, ensuring we have the best teams, offering services that would otherwise be unavailable. We are industry-leading in this sense. Many people believe that trauma therapy is magic that happens in a room with a therapist, but it’s the amazing work that our teams do every day that has the power to heal complex trauma.
The Hub at Fair Ways support our teams in getting individuals to feel safe, have their physical needs met and experience security so that they can begin to belong, experience love, build their self-esteem, understand the impact that trauma has had on them and thrive despite the adversity they’ve experienced. Our multidisciplinary team are experienced clinicians, offering a wide variety of specialist assessments and interventions. They work to offer the services that those in our care deserve, supporting our amazing frontline staff in their incredible work building safety and meeting children and young people’s physical needs. We offer:
Once all of the above are in place and we are getting the basics right, we can offer Direct Therapeutic work to support individuals in developing their self-esteem and in reaching and understanding themselves, and their story. Initially that includes topics such as Coping Skills and Occupational Therapy work to help them regulate their bodies in emotional states as well as Psychoeducation around trauma and how it’s impacted their life. Our team will then move to offering space where they can explore and process their experience through Life Story Work, Talking Therapies, Family Therapy, EMDR, DDP, TheraPlay, Music Therapy or other approaches specifically tailored around that young person’s therapeutic needs. Source: https://www.fairways.co ![]() Location: Central Support (Portsmouth) Salary: £22,499 - £26,483 Contract Type: Full time Specific Hours: 37.5 hours per week Closing Date: 29 February 2024 Who are Fair Ways and what do we stand for?
Fair Ways is a great place to work. We are a team. We care about each other and are all committed to making a change to the lives of the young people and service users in our care. We will not apologise for calling our staff great, the best, or world-class. Our staff are at the core of our organisation and we celebrate them by shouting it from the rooftops! Where and when do we need you? We are currently recruiting for a Placement Officer to work within our Placements Team to establish robust relationships with commissioners and ensure efficient placement matching and commissioning processes to enable Fair Ways to meet its occupancy goals while adhering to relevant standards and best practices. Additionally, this role is crucial in providing insightful data analysis to guide Fair Ways' strategic direction. In this role you will be responsible for a range of exciting things like:
This role is 37.5 hours per week worked flexibly between home, office and central support depending on the needs of the business. There will be one fixed day at Central Support each week which will be your team day allowing in person communication and collaboration with your team. All candidates must have a full driving license and have access to the use of a car. Successful candidates will be required to provide an enhanced Disclosure (DBS). This disclosure cost will be met by Fair Ways. Desirable…. but not Essential Whilst we value the knowledge and understanding that experience and qualifications can bring, we also know that some of our best people have come to us from unrelated backgrounds. These people already held our core values at heart, and with the dedication of our amazing in-house training and development team, we have supported the rest!
Let us look after you! At Fair Ways, we care about your well-being, here is what we currently offer to our dedicated team:
Become part of our community – We can’t wait to meet you! If you're passionate about making a difference and are ready to embark on an incredible journey, apply today and be a part of something amazing at Fair Ways. Join our team and help shape brighter futures! Full details and application documents here |
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