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A local government authority in Elmbridge is seeking a Senior Practitioner to support children and young people in a residential setting. This role involves building relationships, guiding junior staff, and collaborating with multi-agency professionals. The successful candidate will have experience in children's residential care and a Level 3 Diploma in Residential Childcare. This position offers a salary of £36,873 per annum with additional benefits, including generous holiday allowances and a pension scheme.
Our Senior Practitioner role is one that is both structured and varied, where you’ll have a foot in two camps: Directly supporting our children and young people, building trusted relationships, and helping them manage their emotions and behaviours, process trauma, and navigate complex family dynamics. You’ll bring empathy, consistency, and resilience to your work – creating positive experiences filled with laughter, fun, and love, while helping our children and young people to develop healthy routines and coping strategies through meaningful activities including education and contributing to everyday life within the home. Supporting and guiding staff, you will use your previous experience and sense of personal authority, professionalism, and integrity to lead by example, helping team members to make safe, and informed decisions in sometimes challenging circumstances. You will work closely with management within the home to maintain a safe, nurturing environment and collaborate with multi‑agency professionals involved in the lives of our children and young people to contribute to meaningful care planning. You will guide junior members of the team acting as a mentor and sharing best practice, role‑modeling behaviours, creating respectful and confidential boundaries to work within, and inspiring them to grow by supporting them with their induction, training requirements, probation activity, and journey to gain their diplomas. This is a fantastic opportunity for someone ready to take their first step into leadership, without the full stretch and responsibility of a Deputy Manager role. We’ll support you to develop your own skills through training, regular supervision, and a personalised development plan, and the opportunity to gain your Level 5 qualification in Management and Leadership if that’s the path you choose, paving the way for future progression into more senior roles.
Surrey has both urban and rural areas and our residential workforce will be expected to have a valid driving licence to drive in the UK and access to a vehicle, to support our young people to attend appointments, activities or trips as agreed. Reasonable adjustments where needed will be made for successful applicants who have a disability or long‑term health condition to enable them to fulfil the requirements of the job.
Information for applicants on Local Government Reorganisation – Surrey County Council.
In this role, you’ll be expected to provide supervision to more junior team members. While previous supervisory experience isn’t essential, you must be confident in offering guidance and support, and willing to take on this responsibility as part of your development. If you have transferable skills and experience of working in children’s services such as family support or placements, fostering, youth services or probation and prison services you may have developed skills that would align well to our Senior Practitioner role, and we would love to hear from you to understand how these could fit a role in our residential children’s services.
The starting salary for this role is £36,873 per annum for working 36 hours per week plus enhanced rates of pay for any weekends, bank holidays and sleep‑in duties. Are you ready to take the next step in your career in residential children’s care? We currently have an opportunity for a Senior Practitioner to join our Children’s Residential Home in Walton‑on‑Thames. If you are considering a move from the private children’s residential care sector, or another care background this role may more commonly be known as a Residential Team or Shift Leader. This is one of the best roles in our homes – offering a balance between direct work with our children and young people and the opportunity to contribute to the development of your team.
* The salary benchmark is based on the target salaries of market leaders in their relevant sectors. It is intended to serve as a guide to help Premium Members assess open positions and to help in salary negotiations. The salary benchmark is not provided directly by the company, which could be significantly higher or lower.