Senior Practitioner - Fostering support

Cambridgeshire County Council; Huntingdon; Hybrid; GBP 42,000 - 52,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Wellbeing package

Protected time for CPD (6 days)

Refer a Friend £350

CARE development program

Hybrid working

Job summary

Cambridgeshire County Council in Huntingdon is seeking a permanent Senior Practitioner to join the Fostering Support Team. The role focuses on providing stability for children and young people through supportive, reflective practice and professional development.

You will work in a hybrid arrangement, with office and home-based duties, contributing to service development and outcome-driven supervision of foster carers. Interviews are in September.

Qualifications

• Must be a qualified Social Worker registered with Social Work England.
• Must be able to travel across Cambridgeshire.
• Experience with relationship-based practice and achieving positive outcomes for children.
• Ability to balance support and challenge with foster carers and colleagues.
• Strong communication, assessment and report-writing skills.

Responsibilities

• Develop and improve the fostering support service through projects that enhance support for foster carers.
• Mentor colleagues across the fostering support team.
• Provide ongoing supervision to foster carers, ensuring regular visits and capturing children’s voices.
• Help carers develop therapeutic parenting skills with support and constructive challenge.
• Maintain compliance with supervisions, safer caring plans, unannounced visits and fostering reviews on time.
• Ensure households meet Fostering Regulations and National Standards.
• Produce clear, evidence-based reports for panels, reviews and matching.
• Support recruitment of foster carers and promote the service at events and via on-call support.
• Collaborate with partners to support carers and improve retention and satisfaction.
• Engage in training and CPD to enhance skills.

Skills

Communication

Assessment

Report writing

Education

Qualified Social Worker

Job description

The following content displays a map of the jobs location - Scott House, Huntingdon

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
• 6 days of protected time each year to support in maintaining your Continuous Professional Development
• A pay progression scheme to enable you to accelerate through the pay grade as you gain experience and skills
• ARefer a Friend Schemewhere if you refer another Social Worker to us who is subsequently employed by us as a result of that introduction, we’ll pay you an introduction fee of £350
• Access to our Cambridgeshire Academy for Reaching Excellence (CARE) who will support your development, enabling you to become the best practitioner you can be

For more information and to see our other benefits, take a look at the benefits brochure attached to this advert.

About the role

Are you looking for a new challenge? Do you share our passion, commitment and determination to achieve the best outcomes for children and young people through fostering? If so, we'd love to hear from you.

We are looking for a permanent Senior Practitioner to join our Fostering Support Team.

In Cambridgeshire Fostering, our aim is to provide stability for children and young people, helping them to thrive, enjoy all aspects of family life and achieve their full potential. Together with our foster carers, we work hard to ensure children live in homes that meet their needs, promote safety and security, and empower them to have their voices heard. We support children on their journeys towards independence, adoption or reunification with their families.

This is an exciting time to join Cambridgeshire Fostering as we continue to build on a period of stability and growth. We pride ourselves on creating a friendly, supportive and safe working environment where colleagues can develop and thrive. As a learning organisation, we are committed to reflective practice, high-quality supervision and professional development.

This is a hybrid role, with a combination of office-based and home working. As a countywide service, we are also keen to explore flexible working arrangements where possible.

If you share our belief that every child deserves to experience positive family life and achieve the best possible outcomes, we would love to hear from you.

Interviews will be held in person at Scott House in Huntingdon on 9th and 10th September

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.

What will you be doing?

As a Senior Practitioner within the Fostering Support Team, you will:

• Help develop and improve the fostering support service through projects that enhance the quality of support available to foster carers.
• Support and mentor colleagues across the fostering support team.
• Provide ongoing supervision and support to foster carers and fostering households, ensuring children are seen regularly and their voices are captured and reflected in supervisory visits.
• Support carers to develop their therapeutic parenting skills, offering both support and constructive challenge to ensure children's needs are met.
• Maintain compliance by ensuring foster carer supervisions, safer caring plans, unannounced visits and fostering reviews are completed within required timescales.
• Ensure fostering households meet regulatory requirements in line with the Fostering Services Regulations and National Minimum Standards.
• Prepare clear, analytical and evidence-based written and verbal reports for a range of forums, including fostering panels, annual reviews, stability meetings and matching processes.
• Support the recruitment of foster carers and promote the service through fostering events, duty responsibilities and out-of-hours telephone support.
• Work collaboratively with internal and external partners to support foster carers, contribute to service development and address issues that impact carer retention and satisfaction.
• Engage fully in training, supervision and continuous professional development to enhance your skills and knowledge.

About you

You are a confident, dynamic and relationship-focused social worker who is passionate about making a difference for children and families. You are curious in your practice, committed to continuous learning and skilled at building positive relationships with foster carers, children and partner agencies.

You will:

• Be a qualified Social Worker registered with Social Work England.
• Be able to work from a variety of locations and travel independently across Cambridgeshire.
• Bring experience of relationship-based practice and a commitment to achieving positive outcomes for children and young people.
• Be able to balance support and challenge when working alongside foster carers and colleagues.
• Have strong communication, assessment and report-writing skills.

For a full list of the role requirements, please see the Job Description and 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.

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.

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