Member Job Opportunity: Action for Children - Fostering Social Worker

Circa: £35,000 + £700 p.a on call allowance
Department/Division: England North
Location: Horfield Bristol ( Flexibility to work from home on occasion)  
Contract Type: Permanent Full Time
Hours: 37 per week. 

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Benefits – Holiday allowance minimum 29 days  plus public/bank holidays, flexible maternity, adoption and paternity packages, pension scheme where we contribute up to 7%, an employee discount portal and much more! 

Giving children and young people the foundations they need to thrive.

The role
Our three linked services, Fostering South West, Fostering South West Peninsula and Family Breaks Devon provide high quality foster families to vulnerable children and young people from our offices based in Bristol and Exeter.

We also offer the highest standard of care-providing carers with excellent training, supervision and support to achieve the best outcomes for the young people we look after.  We strive to provide a good quality of care to young people, always ensuring they are the centre of our approach.

We are looking for an outstanding Fostering Social Worker who can support placements in the South west. 


You will make a difference by:

• Providing professional supervision and developmental support, including advice and guidance 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.
• Enthusiasm for learning and development, for yourself as a reflective practitioner, and in support of our carer training – this is a learning organisation.

You will need:

• A Social Work qualification.
• To have a valid HCPC registration.
• A Post qualification social work experience
• Experience of assessing, supervising and supporting foster carers
• Experience of managing crisis and breakdown in placements, particularly out of hours.
• 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.
• UK driving licence and access to a car. 

The way we work
We work to make sure every child and young person has the love, support and opportunity they need to reach their potential. If you share the same vision, we want you to join our team. Have a look at our behaviours and values to understand more about the way we work here.

Rewards
We want our employees to feel valued and rewarded for the vital work they do. When you work with us, we'll recognise your efforts with generous annual leave, a comprehensive employer-matched pension scheme and a range of deals and discounts on our dedicated benefits portal. Find out more about our exclusive Action for Children benefits here.

For safe and happy childhoods

At Action for Children, we protect and support children and young people, providing practical and emotional care and support, ensuring their voices are heard, and campaigning to bring lasting improvements to their lives. Last year, we helped more than 387,000 children and families across the UK.

For more information or if you have any questions please email [email protected] 

It's vital for our services to be able to recruit and support adopters / Foster carers from a diverse range of backgrounds to reflect the children who need families. We therefore actively seek to replicate that diversity in our staff, and we positively welcome the wide breadth of experience, knowledge and understanding that this will bring to our services.

Action for Children is passionate about promoting equality, valuing diversity and working inclusively. We welcome applications from all suitably qualified persons particularly people with Disabilities and Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic applicants, as these groups are currently under-represented in our workforce.

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.

Full details and application documents here