Family Support Practitioner

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

About Us

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.

About the Role:

West Lothian Family Support Service is a vital part of our work. You will be based in designated schools in West Lothian to work with children and young people aged 5 to 16yrs to improve their attendance, wellbeing and attainment. This also involves working with parents to help them support their child's progress and could mean visiting them at home. We are still supporting parents and children in the current pandemic.

We are looking for a Family Support Practitioner who can establish and maintain effective partnership work primary and secondary schools and other support agencies in West Lothian. By engaging and working with referred children and families, providing them with focused support which seeks to improve their school engagement, attendance, overall well-being and resilience.

The core working hours of this role are Monday to Friday 8am-4pm and we are happy to discuss at interview stage how the 28 hours per week (4 days) could work for you and us.

As a Family Support Practitioner, you'll be:

• Engaging and working directly with parents to support direct work with children.
• Helping improve/support parenting skills and techniques.
• Promoting family well-being and resilience.
• Liaising and building positive relationships with educational establishments.
• Managing a caseload effectively.

What You'll Bring:

Our job description for the Family Support Practitioner outlines the requirements of the role but the ‘must-haves' are:

• HNC / SVQ 3 in Early Years, Childhood studies or equivalent as a minimum.
• Excellent engagement.
• A knowledge and understanding of child development and the emotional, social, intellectual and physical needs of children and young people.
• Direct experience of planning and undertaking structured support work with children, young people and parents.
• Experience of 1:1 and group work, undertaking assessments (of needs) and service planning with difficult to reach children, young people and families.
• Experience of identifying and managing risk; safeguarding children and young people.
• A willingness to work during the day and occasional evening and weekend work as required by individual service users, working within schools and community.
• Access to a suitable method of transport to enable the duties of the role to be carried out and the willingness to travel.

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 – stay safe and happy.

Application Process: There are 5 sections for you to complete, Personal Details, CV, Supporting Statement & Information, Equality & Diversity, Submission & Declaration. Top Tip... Refer to the job description when writing your Supporting Statement.

Interview Date: w/c 7th February 2022 – this date can change in special circumstances, but we do our best to stick to this.

Talent Pool: We'd like to hold your details in case similar jobs come up but do let us know if you'd rather we didn't.

Contact: Lynsey_Munro@actionforchildren.org.uk in our recruitment team who will be happy to support with your application.

Get to know us a little better by checking out our socials on Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook or YouTube.

Documents

• 1202 Scotland Generic Brochure v13.pdf (1.73 MB)
• Digital Reward Booklet 2021 STAFF final.pdf (3.46 MB)
• Support Worker 3 JDPS (2).pdf (395.19 KB)