Social Worker-Children -Fostering

Location Bradford
Salary £17.50 - £19.50 per hour
Discipline

Within the Fostering Service we have a dedicated Special Guardianship Support Team, who have a statutory duty to provide support to Special Guardians.
The Team offers support to Special Guardians caring for children who are unable to live with their birth parents for a variety of reasons.
The Team offers advice and support to carers including:
• Assessment of need and agreed support plan.
• Sign post to other agencies for support.
• Offering therapeutic advice, techniques & direct work with carers including DDP/PACE
• Liaising with and working alongside therapists/psychological services to determine therapeutic assessments/ work and organising costing’s in order to make applications to the Adoption Support Fund for assessment/therapy.
• Management of support group for carers.
• Attending education meetings and supporting carers with EHCP applications.
• Supporting carers to identify therapeutic training to support their understanding of trauma and parenting.
• Supporting carers to deliver life story work to children in their care.
• Direct work with children and their carers in the community.
• An opportunity to work within a specialist Team.
This is a specialist role for skilled and experienced social workers who are able to understand children in the context of their life story and attachment history and support family placements which are able to meet their needs. It will involve identifying and building packages of support to increase the resilience of placements and with that, the likelihood of placements remaining stable and children being able to achieve and succeed in all areas of their lives.
Main Responsibilities of Post:

1. To work in the Fostering Service as part of the Special Guardianship Support Team, to identify the most suitable support and advice to carers of children in response to requests from other professionals, taking account of their ethnicity, language, religion, disability, identity, education, health, family and social relationships, the wishes and feelings of the child and family, and any other identified needs, including safeguarding concerns.
2. To work with the professionals involved in the caring/planning for children to make the best use of the available resource based on what is in the child’s best interest.
3. To ensure excellent joined up working with key professionals to ensure there is a consistent team round the child approach to any decision making/planning within a permanent placement, in accordance with the statutory, regulatory and policy frameworks for childcare.
4. To have the expertise to undertake effective consultation with SGO carers to build a profile of their skills and abilities so that placements can be maintained and supported.
5. Have an excellent overview and understanding of the effects of Trauma and FASD on children, their development and the appropriate support and advice required for carers.
6. To participate in delivering training to SGO carers and within support groups, seeking outside training resources and continuing development of the service.
7. To be able to collate and analyses information in accordance with the priorities of the service to identify trends/gaps in service and contribute to the wider development of the Fostering Service. To keep abreast of relevant research and developments in the field of family placements and to initiate innovations when appropriate.
8. Undertake assessment of need for SGO carers and draw up support plans appropriate to the needs of the placement to ensure these are sustained.
9. To liaise with therapists and identify appropriate therapeutic assessment and interventions for children and their carers.
10. To liaise with other parts of the Department and specifically act as link with area colleagues to ensure the provision of specialist information on policy, legislation and resources in respect of Special Guardianship carers.
11. Undertake preventative work with service users to diminish safeguarding concerns, investigating concerns of significant harm and making appropriate use of legislation to safeguard and promote the welfare of service users.
12. To provide a social work service to individuals, their families and carers by assessing and identifying their needs and meeting them through direct therapeutic work, care planning and management. Be able to integrate a theoretical approach with practice.
13. Manage a caseload, exercising complex decision making in line with professional criteria and making sure that case work is appropriately planned, critically evaluated and reviewed.
14. Engage effectively with situations of increasing complexity and challenge including multi agency input, complex family organisational dynamics, multiple problems/disadvantage, multiple significant risk factors, and the need to take into account the public interest.
15. Hold DDP level 1 trained and experienced in supporting carers with this approach.