Member Job Opportunity: Action for Children - Fostering Social Worker

Salary: circa £35,000
Location: Exeter, Devon (Hybrid Role)
Directorate: EBL01
Contract Type: Permanent Full Time
Closing Date: 29 September 2022

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Salary: Circa £35,000 per annum plus on call allowance circa £700 per annum.

Contract/Hours: Permanent, Full-Time- 37 hours per week (we would consider 30 hours - simply let us know in your application.)

Perks: Annual leave of 29 days, plus public holidays, flexible maternity, adoption and paternity packages, annual staff awards, up to 7% employer contribution pension scheme, employee discount portal with all your favourite brands, check out more on our career's portal. 

We're thrilled that you're considering a career with Action for Children so here's what you need to know…. 

About the Role
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. 

Action for Children Fostering Southwest Peninsula and Family Breaks Devon seeks to meet the needs of the most vulnerable children and young people in society by the provision of safe, secure and successful foster homes including of short breaks for children with additional needs.

We also offer the highest standard of care-providing foster families 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 carers from the Devon/Somerset borders to Cornwall - 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.  

As a Fostering Social Worker, you'll be:

• 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.
  
• Accountable for ensuring statutory compliance in respect of notifications, etc and meet regulatory body requirements re registration.
  
• Enthusiastic for learning and development, for yourself as a reflective practitioner, and in support of our carer training – this is a learning organisation.

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.
  
• Registration with Social Work
  
• To understand your role as a supervisor to carers and a team member.
  
• 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 Travel across the Peninsula area is essential.

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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.

Contact: Erika Brinkman on 01923 361723 who will be happy to support with your application. 

Interviews will take place on Friday 7th October.

Full details and application documents here