Child & Family Practitioner

Bury Council; Bury; On-site; GBP 28,000 - 32,000; Full time

Job summary

A local authority in Bury is looking for a dedicated Child & Family Practitioner who will support vulnerable children and families. The role involves working in a multi-disciplinary team, providing emotional and practical support, and ensuring child-focused interventions. This is an exciting opportunity for anyone passionate about improving the lives of young people and committed to promoting positive familial relationships within the community. A friendly working environment and excellent professional development are offered.

Benefits

Agile working environment

Committed to equality and diversity

Support for professional development

Qualifications

• Have previous experience of working with children and families in need of help and protection.
• Incorporate respectful challenge for families to change and support complex difficulties.
• Be able to form relationships and see the strengths in families.

Responsibilities

• Provide practical and emotional support to families.
• Contribute to the assessment of harm under Local Authority safeguarding procedures.
• Manage a case load and maintain close working relationships with partners.

Skills

Excellent communication skills

Good knowledge of child development

Time-management skills

Strengths-based approach

Job description

Salary: £28,597.75 - £31,021.92

Closing date: 06 / 08 / 2025

Employment type: Permanent

Division: Family Safeguarding

Hours Per Week: 37

About the role

Become a Child & Family Practitioner for Bury and help with our ‘Let’s Do it for Children’ vision.

We are seeking to recruit an enthusiastic and dedicated Child & Family Practitioner to join our Family Safeguarding Teams. As part of a Family Safeguarding Team, you will be working alongside 6 individual teams; within each team there will be a Team Manager and 6 Social Workers including Advanced Practitioners. Within Family Safeguarding you will be part of a multi‑disciplinary team including Domestic Abuse Practitioners, Domestic Abuse Officers, Recovery Workers, Mental Health Practitioners and a Clinical Psychologist. The work is immensely rich and varied day to day and allows for a high level of multi‑agency working often to tight timeframes.

This is an amazing opportunity to support our most vulnerable children and families. You will be a social worker who relishes the opportunity to work in a fast‑paced, creative and supportive environment. We believe our workforce is our greatest asset and we will ensure you have the right support and a positive working environment to deliver outstanding social care to children, young people and families.

We want our young people to thrive, be proud to call the borough of Bury home and see it as a safe and vibrant place to grow up in. We want you to help us achieve these goals.

You will work directly with children, young people and families to build and maintain empathetic and person‑centred relationships that facilitate change and encourage permanence whilst also working closely with other children’s services and partners.

We are the first Authority in the North‑West to pioneer the Hertfordshire Family Safeguarding Model of working with families and training will be provided to learn new skills within our Model of practice. You will be working alongside Adult Practitioners, giving you more time and scope to work with children.

Working collectively, we prioritise support, training and development within child‑centred practice. If you are enthusiastic about improving the lives and opportunities for children, young people and their families and want to develop your practice, then we want to hear from you!

Within Family Safeguarding we use motivational interviewing and a multi‑agency approach, where Social Workers, Family Support Workers, Domestic Abuse Practitioners, Recovery Workers, Mental Health Practitioners and Psychologists collaborate closely to support families to find their own solutions effectively, reducing the need for referrals to other agencies and improving outcomes for families.

We want to invest in you and we have a clear vision around succession planning for our most talented workers. You will have the support and opportunities to progress your journey in Social Work.

Your role responsibilities

• Provide practical and emotional support to children and their families to support the implementation of the child’s plan.
• Promote parents, children and young people’s participation.
• Contribute to the assessment of harm and work within the Local Authority’s safeguarding procedures, as appropriate to your role.
• Ensure that practice is underpinned by our practice standards, and that the Family Safeguarding model is embedded in our work with children and families.
• Recognise strengths, vulnerabilities and attitude to change to help keep children, young people and their families healthy, happy and safe.
• Ensure child‑focused interventions clearly bring out the voice of the child and they are reviewed regularly.
• Manage a case load, regularly undertaking direct work with children and families bespoke to address identified individual support needs and reduce the risk of harm.
• Build and maintain close working relationships with partners including Early Help and Prevention, education services, police and the NHS.
• Maintain up to date, detailed and accurate records of all cases through Liquid Logic and other recording tools, ensuring these are purposeful and jargon free.
• Contribute to the overall development of services for children and their families.

About you

We want to invest in you, and we have a clear vision around succession planning for our most talented workers. At the heart of everything we do are the children and young people of Bury.

You will

• Be able to form relationships, seeing the strengths in families and building on those assessments.
• Always look for solutions to support families to live together safely and for children and young people to thrive.
• Have excellent communication skills which enable them to undertake effective family engagement that builds on families’ strengths and coping strategies.
• Incorporate respectful challenge for families to change, supporting and enabling them to resolve multiple and complex difficulties leading to sustainable change.
• Have good knowledge of child development, attachment theory, assessing parenting capacity and the importance of the benefits of promoting and managing supervised family time.
• Have good time‑management skills with the ability to work to deadlines and re‑organise the workload to meet conflicting demands.
• Commit to equality, diversity and inclusion.
• Have previous experience of working with children and families in need of help and protection, using a strengths‑based approach would be an advantage.

Benefits of working for Bury Council

To hear about the benefits for working with Bury Council, please visit A good employer | greater jobs.

We support employees to work with agility, where appropriate for the post and service requirements.

We are committed to Bury being an equal society that recognises values and embraces all people, regardless of any difference, for the skills, abilities and experiences they bring into the workforce and the wider community. Therefore, we guarantee an interview for disabled people, looked after children / care leavers, armed forces personnel (including reservists and veterans) and carers of adults or disabled children if they meet the essential criteria.

Next steps

Come and join Team Bury!

If you feel you can use your experience to make a real difference, we would love to hear from you! For an informal discussion about the role please contact Kate Press, our Head of Service, on 0161 253 5023 / 07484010335 or [e-mail].

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