Job Opportunity with Action for Children - Fostering Social Worker

Circa: £38,000
Location: London 
Directorate: EBL01
Hours: Full-Time, 37 Hours
Contract Type: Fixed Term Full Time
Closing Date: 4 May 2022
Number of Roles: 1

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Salary: Circa £38,033 per annum  inclusive of On Call allowance and Inner London Weighting 
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Fixed term contract until 31st March 2023 

Location: London with some homeworking

Perks: Annual leave of 29 days (pro-rata) PLUS public holidays, flexible maternity, adoption and paternity packages, annual staff awards, 7% employer contribution pension scheme, employee discount portal with all your favourite brands, check out more on our careers portal. 

Closing Date: Midnight on 4th May 2022 - if we receive a high number of applications, we may have to close earlier than advertised. 

We're thrilled that you're considering a career with Action for Children so here's what you need to know…. 
 
About Us 
At Action for Children, we believe that every child should have a safe and happy childhood. Last year, we helped more than 600,000 children and families across the UK. We work to ensure their voices are heard, and campaign to bring lasting change to their lives. 
 
About the Role: 
We are not a large service, but we are long established, and have committed, skilled and experienced foster carers who are able to provide stable, nurturing family homes for children and young people who for various reasons aren't able to be cared for in their birth families.

Our children, young people and carers are supported and by a very experienced and skilled staff team. One of the strengths that our foster carers often comment on is that our service has a ‘family' feel to it.

We are looking for an outstanding Fostering Social Worker who can support placements in the London and surrounding area, so flexibility to travel across this cluster as and when needed is imperative for this role.  You will also have the opportunity to assess applicants to foster. During Covid times, we support agile / homeworking with the expectation to progress back into our office base in WC2B 5DG, when we can, with continued flexibility and a mix of home, office and travel to meet children and carers where they are.

As a Fostering Social Worker, you'll be: 

• Providing professional supervision and developmental support to fostering families and working with other professionals where appropriate. The role includes being part of an Out of Hours Telephone Support Service (through participation in rota) providing support 24 hrs a day, 365 days a year.
  
• Completing complex assessments of applicants to foster, making appropriate recommendations, with a view to ensure outcome focused achievements for children, young people and families.
  
• Supporting fostering families to look after children and young people who have experienced trauma and ensuring they have the skills and knowledge to enable them to undertake this complex task within a family home environment
  
• Undertaking fostering reviews, providing high quality, analytical reports and presenting to Panel where appropriate, ensuring that children are receiving the best service possible.
  
• Being accountable for ensuring statutory compliance in respect of notifications, etc and meet regulatory body requirements at all times re registration.

 
What You'll Bring: 

Our job description for the Fostering Social Worker outlines the requirements of the role but the ‘must-haves' are: 

• A Social Work qualification and 2yrs + post qualification experience.
  
• Registration with Social Work England.
  
• The ability to manage your work to deadlines and comply with regulatory requirements.
  
• Strong ethos of keeping the child at the centre.
  
• Strong commitment to work within our therapeutic framework to support the needs of children.
  
• Capacity to plan and prioritise, to use electronic records system and IT effectively including participating in virtual meetings and webinars.
  
• Experience of fostering is preferable.
  
• Access to a suitable means of transport to undertake the duties of the role required. Travel across the area is essential.

 
Working here is so much more than a job. Whether this is a career change for you or the next step in your journey, we'd love to hear from you. 

We work together to reach our vision of safe and happy childhoods. A diverse workforce enriches the lives of the children and young people we work with and we welcome applications from everyone. We value and celebrate our differences and as an inclusive workplace we want everyone to be themselves. 

We are committed to safer recruitment practices to protect our service users; therefore, all applicants are expected to have an understanding of and commitment to safeguarding best-practice. 
 
We can't wait to hear from you – stay safe and happy.  

Application Process: There are 5 sections for you to complete, Personal Details, CV, Supporting Statement & Information, Equality & Diversity, Submission & Declaration. Top Tip... Refer to the job description when writing your Supporting Statement.   

Talent Pool: We'd like to hold your details in case similar jobs come up but do let us know if you'd rather we didn't.  

Full details and application documents here