 Location: West Bromwich Contract Type: Contractor Closing Date: 31 March 2021 Salary: Fee of up to £2000 on completion Specific Hours: Contractor St Christopher’s has an exciting opportunity to join its West Midlands Fostering Team covering foster carers across the West Midlands local authorities. We are looking for Form F Assessors to help us assess potential foster carers as to their ability to provide a safe and nurturing environment for children in our care.
About the Role
Skills for Independent Form F Assessors We are open to applications from a range of backgrounds and expertise, but you will need to possess the following skills and knowledge:
What we offer As part of their role Independent Form F Assessors receive:
How to apply If you are interested in this opportunity, please send your covering statement or letter and CV to Debbie Stone (DebbieStone@stchris.org.uk) All applicants will be required to undertake a DBS check as part of the interview process. For the full job description and person specification, please click here. For more information or assistance during the application process, please contact Debbie Stone (DebbieStone@stchris.org.uk). Full details and application documents here  Location: Fostering Chelmsford Contract Type: Permanent Closing Date: 21 February 2021 Salary: Salary £30,000 - £41,000 per annum depending on experience Specific Hours: 37.5 hours per week Remote Home Working Due to current situation, this role will be home based. Any face to face work with carers or children only occurs in relation to safeguarding and under government guidance.
We have a fantastic opportunity to join our friendly team and a growing fostering service in Chelmsford where your skills will flourish, and you will be able to contribute to achieving positive results for young people. About Us St Christopher's is an established children’s charity that has provided care and support for vulnerable children and young people for 150 years. Our focus and commitment is all about our children and young people. We provide fostering, children's homes and a range of innovative housing and support services across London, Essex, West Midlands and the Isle of Man. We really care about children and young people, placing them at the centre of everything we do. We ask children and young people what they think and involve them in decision making, from helping to shape new services to interviewing new members of staff. Our social pedagogic approach is our core philosophy of care. Put simply this is a holistic approach for building positive relationships with children and young people to bring out their inner “diamond”. We are an equal opportunity employer and keen to develop an inclusive workforce were people feel they belong. We hope to attract application’s from under- represented groups including people from different cultures, nationalities, socio economic backgrounds, ages, disabilities, religion, faith, sex, orientation, child care responsibilities and with gender diverse identities. About the Role As a Senior Practitioner, you will deputise for the Fostering Manager where required, and be responsible for supervising professional staff. You will develop high quality learning and development activities both for employees and foster carers. You will hold a reduced caseload. Applicants should have:
In return we offer:
This role is in a developing team which will provide you with an opportunity to develop positive links and relationships across the Easter Region and the organization. If you’re ready for the challenge and think you have the skills to drive St Christopher’s forward we would love to hear from you. Recruitment Process At St Christopher’s we are committed to the safeguarding of all children and young people in our care. During the recruitment process you will be expected to complete an application form to ensure we capture essential information to meet legislation, best practice and vetting requirements. Applicants will ideally already be on the DBS Update Service; if this is not the case St Christopher's will carry out a DBS (police) check prior to starting. To be considered, your online application must include a full supporting statement addressing the criteria stated in the Person Specification. For the full Job Description for this role and more detail about what will be required, please click here. For more information or assistance during the application process, please contact recruitment@stchris.org.uk Closing Date: 21 Feb 2021 (Applications will be reviewed as received) Interview Date: 01 March 2021 Full details and application documents here  Location: Fostering Chelmsford Contract Type: Permanent Closing Date: 21 February 2021 Salary: Salary £30,000 - £41,000 per annum depending on experience Specific Hours: 37.5 hours per week Due to current situation, this role will be home based. Any face to face work with carers or children only occurs in relation to safeguarding and under government guidance.
We have a fantastic opportunity to join our friendly team and a growing fostering service in Chelmsford where your skills will flourish, and you will be able to contribute to achieving positive results for young people. About Us St Christopher's is an established children’s charity that has provided care and support for vulnerable children and young people for 150 years. Our focus and commitment is all about our children and young people. We provide fostering, children's homes and a range of innovative housing and support services across London, Essex, West Midlands and the Isle of Man. We really care about children and young people, placing them at the centre of everything we do. We ask children and young people what they think and involve them in decision making, from helping to shape new services to interviewing new members of staff. Our social pedagogic approach is our core philosophy of care. Put simply this is a holistic approach for building positive relationships with children and young people to bring out their inner “diamond”. We are an equal opportunity employer and keen to develop an inclusive workforce were people feel they belong. We hope to attract application’s from under- represented groups including people from different cultures, nationalities, socio economic backgrounds, ages, disabilities, religion, faith, sex, orientation, child care responsibilities and with gender diverse identities. About the Role As a Senior Practitioner, you will deputise for the Fostering Manager where required, and be responsible for supervising professional staff. You will develop high quality learning and development activities both for employees and foster carers. You will hold a reduced caseload. Applicants should have:
In return we offer:
This role is in a developing team which will provide you with an opportunity to develop positive links and relationships across the Easter Region and the organization. If you’re ready for the challenge and think you have the skills to drive St Christopher’s forward we would love to hear from you. Recruitment Process At St Christopher’s we are committed to the safeguarding of all children and young people in our care. During the recruitment process you will be expected to complete an application form to ensure we capture essential information to meet legislation, best practice and vetting requirements. Applicants will ideally already be on the DBS Update Service; if this is not the case St Christopher's will carry out a DBS (police) check prior to starting. To be considered, your online application must include a full supporting statement addressing the criteria stated in the Person Specification. For the full Job Description for this role and more detail about what will be required, please click here. For more information or assistance during the application process, please contact recruitment@stchris.org.uk Closing Date: 21 Feb 2021 (Applications will be reviewed as received) Interview Date: 01 March 2021 Full details and application documents here  Location: Fostering Chelmsford Contract Type: Permanent Closing Date: 21 February 2021 Salary: Salary £30,000 - £41,000 per annum depending on experience Specific Hours: 37.5 hours per week Remote home working Due to current situation, this role will be home based. Any face to face work with carers or children only occurs in relation to safeguarding and under government guidance.
We have a fantastic opportunity to join our friendly team and a growing fostering service in Chelmsford where your skills will flourish, and you will be able to contribute to achieving positive results for young people. About Us St Christopher's is an established children’s charity that has provided care and support for vulnerable children and young people for 150 years. Our focus and commitment is all about our children and young people. We provide fostering, children's homes and a range of innovative housing and support services across London, Essex, West Midlands and the Isle of Man. We really care about children and young people, placing them at the centre of everything we do. We ask children and young people what they think and involve them in decision making, from helping to shape new services to interviewing new members of staff. Our social pedagogic approach is our core philosophy of care. Put simply this is a holistic approach for building positive relationships with children and young people to bring out their inner “diamond”. We are an equal opportunity employer and keen to develop an inclusive workforce were people feel they belong. We hope to attract application’s from under- represented groups including people from different cultures, nationalities, socio economic backgrounds, ages, disabilities, religion, faith, sex, orientation, child care responsibilities and with gender diverse identities. About the Role As a Senior Practitioner, you will deputise for the Fostering Manager where required, and be responsible for supervising professional staff. You will develop high quality learning and development activities both for employees and foster carers. You will hold a reduced caseload. Applicants should have:
In return we offer:
This role is in a developing team which will provide you with an opportunity to develop positive links and relationships across the Easter Region and the organization. If you’re ready for the challenge and think you have the skills to drive St Christopher’s forward we would love to hear from you. Recruitment Process At St Christopher’s we are committed to the safeguarding of all children and young people in our care. During the recruitment process you will be expected to complete an application form to ensure we capture essential information to meet legislation, best practice and vetting requirements. Applicants will ideally already be on the DBS Update Service; if this is not the case St Christopher's will carry out a DBS (police) check prior to starting. To be considered, your online application must include a full supporting statement addressing the criteria stated in the Person Specification. For the full Job Description for this role and more detail about what will be required, please click here. For more information or assistance during the application process, please contact recruitment@stchris.org.uk Closing Date: 21 Feb 2021 (Applications will be reviewed as received) Interview Date: 01 March 2021 Full details and application documents here  2020 has been a challenging year for everyone and the stresses caused by coronavirus and lockdown have impacted all of us.
This impact has been felt by the children and young people we provide care for at St Christopher’s. Being in care, on the edge of care or leaving care can be a challenging experience for young people as they miss out on having the family structure that many other young people rely on for support. This can have a particular impact in stressful times such as these when we all need to rely on the support of those closest to us to get us through. In times like these, the care we provide young people is so important as we are the homes and families that they draw on for support. We provide a caring and supportive environment in which young people can grow and fulfil their potential. To ensure this, we listen to our young people and let them guide the support we provide. This is so important in helping young people feel in control of what’s going on around them and their futures. The young people we care for are resilient and look forward to the future. We want to ensure young people can thrive while with us and once they go on to live independently, and to do this, we have made sure to continue delivering all our services over the course of the last year. We aim to continue delivering services in the coming year to help our young people grow and fulfil their ambitions. To do this, we need the help of generous members of the public to enable us to keep delivering this care and support to young people now and in the year ahead. Your donation will help our young people adapt to the changing circumstances they face and build the resilience to grow and thrive in care and once they begin to live independently. Make a donation to our Christmas Appeal today. Source: www.stchris.org.uk Member News: “The whole organisation is child centric”, celebrates report on St Christopher’s17/11/2020
 St Christopher’s has been awarded the Customer Service Excellence Award for the tenth year running, with six areas of our work identified as going above and beyond expectations.
Since 2011 the CSE Award has marked us on how we respond to the needs of the children and young people in our care, as well as our local authority partners, supporters and staff teams. This year we were awarded six areas of Compliance Plus, which refers to “[behaviours] or practices which exceed the requirements of the standard and are viewed as exceptional or as exemplar to others”. These include:
Chief Executive Jonathan Whalley said: “This report is a glowing evaluation of all the services that make up St Christopher’s. Considering the global events of 2020, it would be easy for us to drop the ball – however, this report just proves how much our staff have stepped up and continued to excel in their care and support for young people.” You can read a copy of the report here. Source: www.stchris.org.uk  TACT welcomes today’s reports by the Children’s Commissioner including ‘Children who no one knows what to do with’, and ‘Private provision in children’s social care’. We fully recognize and endorse the Commissioner’s description of the current “deep-rooted institutional ambivalence” to the plight of vulnerable children in care, which we see manifesting itself in many ways.
The “deep-rooted institutional ambivalence” also shows itself in the lack of priority to promote or help recruit foster carers by the DfE, whilst recruitment of adopters is well resourced. And there is also the Staying Put farrago, where deliberate under funding and cynical reliance on benefits, is poisoning an excellent and hard-won approach to enabling young people to remain with their foster carers when they turn 18. We see ambivalence in the lack of staying put for post 18’s in residential care and the empty promises of the care leaver covenant. Where the “deep-rooted institutional ambivalence” is most obvious is in the refusal of successive ministers and officials to engage properly and meaningfully with care experienced adults. This will be looked back on with regret in years to come and is an egregious oversight that denies us the opportunity to transform the system through co-designing it with those who have that invaluable lived experience. We also welcome the spotlight placed by the Children’s Commissioner on the growing use of private provision in the children’s care system, revealing a fragmented, uncoordinated system which allows companies with complex ownership structures to make significant profit from fostering vulnerable children. It is high time that the government banned the making of private profit from public care, it is corrosive, and adds nothing to the sector. Nothing better illustrates the “deep-rooted institutional ambivalence to the plight of vulnerable children in care” than the fact that Ministers are happy to see multi-millionaires further enrich themselves through the childhoods of vulnerable children. Source: www.tactcare.org.uk  St Christopher’s Fellowship is “encouraging secure, long-term social networks” for care leavers, according to an evaluation released by the Department for Education.
The report on the children’s charity’s Staying Close model, released on Tuesday 3 November by the DfE Innovation Programme, highlights “the pilot’s genuine desire to allow young people to gain autonomy and its ability to actively engage young people in decision making”. The Staying Close model works within four children’s homes in the London Boroughs of Ealing and Hounslow to support young people transitioning from care to independence, with reflective practice facilitated by MAC-UK. Young people co-produce plans for professionals on what they want to support their transition including life skills sessions, trialling move-on accommodation and regular contact with people they care about. The evaluation explores how St Christopher’s meets the four key aims of the pilot, which were relationship management, stable education, employment or training (EET), independent living skills and wellbeing. Authentic relationships between young people and their care workers, which develop how relationships typically would outside of the care system, have been key to the success of the project. “[It’s] human, it’s normal, because at the end of the day, if that was your family, and you progressed and you went on to have children, or study, or whatever… that’s the sort of relationship you would have,” shared one young person in the report. Project partners at Ealing and Hounslow have already implemented policies on expectations and boundaries for relationships based on learning from St Christopher’s Staying Close. Having relationships with people who want them to succeed has given care leavers support to sustain education, training and employment. The report describes this as “invaluable, with one of the young people stating that they would not be able to go to university if they were not part of the Staying Close programme”. Support from a dedicated life skills worker allowed young people to feel confident that they could ask for help when they needed it. “Young people benefiting from the project stated that they ‘felt safer’ as it was as though they had a ‘safety net’ but also still had their independence,” the evaluation found. To improve wellbeing, move-on accommodation and regular, planned contact with children’s home staff allows young people to transition gradually so they can experience independence without feeling isolated. “All of the young people felt that this support was useful, particularly for those with existing mental ill-health issues,” explains the report. The project is now expanding across all St Christopher’s children’s homes and semi-independent accommodation in the UK. Jonathan Whalley, Chief Executive, said: “I am thrilled that St Christopher’s Staying Close is succeeding in maintaining those key supportive relationships for young people as they leave care. Thank you to everyone for their commitment in developing the pilot, especially to the young people for their invaluable wisdom and insight.” Source: www.stchris.org.uk  Like many charities we have been opening our eyes to structural racism, bias and discrimination in our society, our organisation and the wider charity sector.
Back in June, in response to the Black Lives Matter movement, St Christopher’s committed to ensuring we are a just and equal organisation for staff and young people of all races. Since then, our Race Matters Group has been exploring areas where St Christopher’s can make changes to benefit everyone who makes up our charity. Race Matters is composed of employees from across the service types and regions that we operate in. The group has identified five priority areas to work on:
For example, one topic of discussion has focused on how the organisation has assessed the resources we have to meet the health and wellbeing of staff and the young people we care for in the knowledge of how racism impacts on some groups. This includes how we engage and collaborate with external services and which of those services are best placed to meet the needs of our workforce and young people. The group has also looked at the appropriateness and context of terminology used within the organisation. As everyone offers a unique perspective on these issues they are not simple problems that can be solved, so it is essential to raise awareness and promote learning around these difficult topics. As an organisation we are encouraging colleagues to submit their equality and diversity data. This will provide an overall picture of our workforce so that we can look through different cultural lenses, be more targeted and create a stronger sense of belonging. Members are keen to ensure these changes are not short-term but ones that will benefit employees and young people long into the future. This means acting with thought and consideration and commitment to facilitating change which will last the test of time. Chief Executive Jonathan Whalley said: “Thank you to our colleagues for establishing this group and being so open about their experiences. This work will not be easy or a quick fix, but is hugely important in ensuring all St Christopher’s staff and young people feel valued and equal.” Source: www.stchris.org.uk  Improved emotional wellbeing is one of St Christopher’s aims for the children and young people we care for. One way we achieve this is through our multi-disciplinary therapeutic teams. Fern is an Art Therapist on the Isle of Man. She is part of the Wraparound therapeutic team, which works with children in care, adoptive parents, foster carers and social care staff to support their emotional wellbeing. The team’s skillset includes a range of therapeutic approaches to ensure that they can offer the most appropriate kind of help to their clients. Read below to find out how art therapy is making a difference to young people on the island. “Our team is made up of five therapists, who are trained in various forms of therapy and counselling. Every Monday we meet to discuss developments and explore any new referrals to the service. People come to us with a variety of needs: attachment, abandonment and rejection, loss, neglect and trauma are ones that surface most regularly. As we provide therapeutic services to Looked After Children, care leavers and adoption families it is important we assess each case on an individual basis in order to signpost them to the most appropriate team member based on what type of therapeutic work is required. Working within a variety of children, young people, parents, adopters and carers means that every day is different, which makes this role interesting and a continuous learning experience.  My qualifications and skills lie in Art Therapy, which is different to more traditional therapies as the act of creating art is the primary form of communication between client and therapist. Art therapy is non-directive and richly rooted with psychological theory. In an art therapy session, creative acts form a bridge between the client’s conscious and unconscious minds. This bridge allows emotive material to surface into the client’s awareness. It is the job of the therapist to remain attuned to this so that they can support the client to identify significant feelings and experiences that may provide an informed understanding towards their wellbeing.
In my experience, using non-verbal, non-directive therapy is crucial when working with clients who have experienced severe neglect and trauma. As art therapy is so non-directive it becomes a comfortable way to support the client to process only as much as they feel able to at that time. As Wraparound works with a client group who may have experienced little exposure to boundaries and structure, part of my role is investing time and energy into defining the therapeutic structure, as well as providing a sense of safety within the therapeutic room. These little acts can become poignant, opening up doorways to explore the client’s attachment experiences and feelings towards rejection and loss. In the beginning of working with a new client I gain an understanding of the client’s experiences and messages they believe with regard to their art-making, as these inform what the client needs to feel safe enough to engage in the art therapy process. When a piece of work is finished it is a marker in the client’s journey of therapy, which is often used to reflect their progress and pinpoint conscious awareness of significant factors. Currently I am using art therapy principles to support two siblings in the process of moving back to their family home and making sense of their emotionally traumatic experiences. This work is received positively and evidences the power of creativity and its ability to inspire confidence, provide a sense of mastery and witness the trauma that has been experienced.” Therapeutic support is just one way we create brighter futures for children and young people. Find out how your donations make a difference to their lives or support us today. Source: www.stchris.org.uk |
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