Relief Family Time Workers

Cambridge County Council; Cambridgeshire and Peterborough; On-site; GBP 14,000 - 19,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Wellbeing package

4 weeks additional annual leave

Flexible bank holidays

Additional Voluntary Contributions to/

Development opportunities and coaching

Paid volunteering hours

IDEAL network access

Employee Recognition Awards

Our Cambs Rewards discounts, Car Lease

Job summary

Cambridgeshire is seeking a Relief Family Time Worker to provide flexible cover across Cambridgeshire. The role focuses on supervising Family Time sessions between children and families, ensuring emotional support and safe transitions while maintaining high standards of safeguarding.

Driving licence and travel across locations are essential. You will join a team within Children's Social Care, contributing to positive memories and life story work, with flexible hours Mon–Fri and occasional late

Qualifications

• Experience working with children and families, especially those in distress.
• Confident engaging with parents in challenging situations while maintaining boundaries.
• Excellent observational, written, and verbal communication skills.
• Ability to manage workload and work independently across different locations.
• Hold a full driving licence and have access to a vehicle for travel across Cambridgeshire.

Responsibilities

• Facilitate and supervise regular Family Time sessions between children and their parents or wider family members.
• Support children emotionally throughout each session and help them manage transitions between carers and family.
• Observe and record interactions, using the Department of Health's Parenting Capacity Framework, ensuring high quality, factual case notes.
• Role model positive parenting and intervene when necessary to ensure safety.
• Prepare rooms, resources, and plans to create a warm, welcoming, and child centred session environment.
• Contribute to children's life story work, helping capture positive memories and experiences.
• Liaise with social workers, foster carers, and other professionals to share information and support safeguarding practices.
• Report to a Family Time Team Manager, attending supervision and team meetings as part of the wider service.

Skills

Experience with children and families

Compassionate

Resilient

Excellent communication skills

Self-motivated

Flexible/adaptable

Independent worker

Tools

Basic IT systems

Job description

This is an exciting opportunity to join the Supervised Contact Service as a Relief Family Time Worker, supporting children and families across Cambridgeshire on an as‑needed basis.

The service sits within Children's Social Care and plays a vital role in enabling children, who cannot currently live with their parents due to safeguarding concerns, to spend safe and meaningful time with their families during court proceedings.

Family Time is often a deeply emotional and complex experience, particularly for children who have experienced trauma. Our role is to support children to maintain safe connections with their birth families, helping them preserve a sense of identity, history and belonging, and to create positive memories, whether or not they eventually return home.

Sessions take place primarily within our dedicated Family Time venues located near children's foster placements. When risk reduces and progress allows, some sessions may move into the community.

As a Relief Family Time Worker, you will provide flexible cover to meet service demands. Current service needs require availability to work Monday to Friday, across both mornings and afternoons. Whilst hours are not guaranteed, flexibility is essential to support the delivery of sessions, some of which may continue until approximately 6pm.

As the role involves travelling between different Family Time locations, a full driving licence and access to a vehicle are essential.

For more information or to chat about this opportunity please contact Assistant Service Managers Mel Hayes on 07393 146 794 or at [e-mail] or Sreenadh Puthanpurakkal on 07780 227 940 or at [e-mail]

Appointment to this post will be subject to the outcome of an Enhanced Disclosure obtained through the Disclosure and Barring Service. The Council is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and vulnerable adults and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment.

Our benefits

We value our colleagues in Cambridgeshire County Council and have developed a number of benefits in addition to the basics like annual leave, sick pay, pension and mileage

• A comprehensive wellbeing package to cover all aspects of wellbeing, both in and out of work, which can also be accessed by your family
• Buy up to 4 weeks additional annual leave (pro-rata) through our salary sacrifice scheme
• Take your bank holidays flexibly to better suit your personal circumstances
• Make Additional Voluntary Contributions (Shared AVCs) to your pension with tax and National Insurance savings
• Access to development opportunities, apprenticeships and qualified coaches to support your personal and professional growth
• Paid volunteering hours each year so you can make a positive impact on our community during your normal working day
• Access to Peer Support Groups through our IDEAL staff equality, diversity and inclusion network
• Opportunities to nominate and receive Employee Recognition Awards
• An Our Cambs Rewards account, giving you access to in‑store and online discounts as well as our Car Lease and Cycle to Work schemes

Take a look at our Employment Benefits Brochure attached to this advert to find out more.

What will you be doing?

As a Family Time Worker, you will:

• Facilitate and supervise regular Family Time sessions between children and their parents or wider family members.
• Support children emotionally throughout each session and help them manage transitions between carers and family.
• Observe and record interactions, using the Department of Health's Parenting Capacity Framework, ensuring high quality, factual case notes that contribute to ongoing social work assessments.
• Role model positive parenting and intervene when necessary to ensure safety.
• Prepare rooms, resources, and plans to create a warm, welcoming, and child centred session environment.
• Contribute to children's life story work, helping capture positive memories and experiences.
• Liaise with social workers, foster carers, and other professionals to share information and support robust safeguarding practices.
• Report to a Family Time Team Manager, attending supervision and team meetings as part of the wider service.

About you

We are looking for a compassionate, resilient, and self‑motivated individual who has experience working with children and families, particularly those experiencing distress or emotional difficulty.

Confidence to engage with parents in challenging situations while maintaining clear professional boundaries is essential to the role.

You will have excellent observational, written, and verbal communication skills and be able to manage your own workload, plan sessions, and work independently across different locations.

As a reliable, organised individual you will be committed to safeguarding and child‑centred practice and be comfortable using basic IT systems for record keeping.

You must hold a full driving licence and have access to a vehicle, as travel across Cambridgeshire is required.

We welcome applicants who have transferable skills from roles in education, early years, health, youth work, residential settings, or any family support environment.

For a full list of the requirements of the role, please check out the Job Description & Person Specification.

About us

Cambridgeshire is a great place to work and live with a diverse population, an urban centre in Cambridge, historic Isle of Ely, Huntingdon and St Ives as well as more rural landscapes.

Our four values are central to our culture, driving everything we do.

We are proud to serve the diverse communities of Cambridgeshire and want our workforce to be reflective of this diversity, which we firmly believe benefits our colleagues, the organisation and our communities. If you don't meet every single requirement in the job role but think this could be you, please don't be put off. We are committed to building a workplace that is compassionate and inclusive as well as diverse, so if you think you could be a good candidate for this role please consider applying and speak to the recruiting manager if you have any questions.

Our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy, along with our employee network 'IDEAL' and self‑organised peer support groups help us to foster an inclusive, supportive and safe working environment where people feel valued, respected, and empowered. We collect relevant diversity data for monitoring as part of the recruitment process to understand the diversity of our applicants and monitor any trends throughout the recruitment processes so that we can take meaningful action.

We are proud to be a Disability Confident Leader. We fully support providing reasonable adjustments throughout our recruitment process, as well as when you join us, and we encourage candidates to contact the Hiring Manager, whose details can be found in the advert, to discuss any adjustment needs. Through a Guaranteed Interview Scheme, we will offer an interview to all applicants who disclose a disability and meet the essential criteria for a job vacancy. On your application form you can indicate you are disabled. Some examples of reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process could include additional time to complete an assessment or printing a document on pastel coloured paper with larger font size and line spacing. We would value talking about what might be possible to enable you to join us and thrive, so if there is something that would help you to do your best during your journey with us, please get in touch.

Visit our jobs and careers section to find out more about our wide range of learning and development opportunities; apprenticeships; our wellbeing package; staff benefits; our commitment to equality, diversity and Inclusion.

https://www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk/council/jobs-and-careers