Family Support Worker

This is a Gloucestershire County Council job.
 

• Job Title:                            Family Support Worker
• Job Location:                     Shire Hall, Gloucester 
• Salary:                               £32,115 - £35,235 per annum 
• Hours per Week:               37.00 
• Contract Type:                   Permanent 
• Closing Date:                     23/02/2025 
• Job Requisition Number:   10718 
• This post is not open to job share

We are currently recruiting for 2 full time Family Support Workers to join our Edge of Care team on a permanent basis.

Reward and Support

For all your hard work, you will receive the following:

• between £32,115 - £35,235 per annum subject to experience
• flexible and agile working opportunities
• 25.5 days annual leave rising to 30.5 days after 5 years continuous service
• option to purchase 10 days of additional leave per year (pro rata for part-time staff)
• family friendly policies and benefits to help support you and your family
• supportive and positive working environment with regular, robust supervision
• Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS)
• access to our Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) that provides free, confidential, counselling and advice for employees, available 24 hours a day, online and by telephone
• an in-house Occupational Health service
• employee discount scheme
• cycle to work scheme
• links to employee networks such as Prism (LGBT+) and the Young Employees Network
• career development and qualification opportunities
• access to our Social Work Academy

Right child, right support, right time, every time

We are working together to support families and communities to give every child the best chance of a happy and rewarding life, especially those who need more help. 

Gloucestershire offers a range of opportunities to develop your career, supported by a phenomenal Social Work Academy offer, a developing systemic practice methodology, an ambitious leadership team and an award-winning workforce.

Gloucestershire Children’s Services are improving. Our latest Ofsted inspection (February 2022) identified that:

‘Significant progress has been made in many areas of Gloucestershire’s children’s services… significant financial investment and the backing of political leaders, has led to improved services that are now more effective in meeting the needs of children and families’.

We are a local authority adopting, and training all colleagues in, systemic social work practice. If you would like to be part of an authority that takes a relational approach to working with families and focuses on what needs to change in the system around a child and family to enable children to thrive, then consider a role with GCC.

About Us

The Edge of Care Team is made up of 2 Deputy Team Managers, 1 Team Manager and 24 Family Support Workers. The team work in partnership with children and their families or carers to provide services aiming to promote positive change, the resilience of children and the stability of their placements (at home or in accommodation) through task-focussed time-limited interventions and packages of direct work. The team also works to reunify children back home from care settings and to enable children to step down from residential care to foster care and offer preventative support where a current assessment indicates family breakdown.

The Out of Hours Response Service (ORS) contributes to the department’s emergency provision on a countywide basis.  We ensure identified staff members are available, on a rota basis, to respond within one hour of a request for a service.

About You

As a Family Support Worker you will have experience of working with children, young people, families, and communities to deliver a wide range of interventions.

Experience of working with multi-agency assessments and plans is also a must. 

A full driving licence and access to a car is essential. 

The role of a Family Support Worker requires you to work flexibly and may include working evenings and weekends.

As well as your experience, there are some things we require of you to be successfully appointed to this post:

• a full driving licence and willingness to drive
• DBS clearance

How to apply

For an informal chat about this role, please contact Alistair Elliott on Alistair Elliott@gloucestershire.gov.uk  

We reserve the right to close an advertisement earlier than the stated closing date if we receive a suitable number of applications.

Under the terms of our Safer Recruitment Policy, if you are invited to interview, we will take up safeguarding references prior to your interview to understand your suitability to work with vulnerable children. These references will then be discussed in your interview. Please give details of at least two referees, one of whom must be your present and/or last employer and the other from a previous employer(s). These will need to cover the last three years of employment/education. In the case of applicants leaving full time education or not having worked since doing so, the Head of School, College or University should be one of the named referees. We do not accept references from friends or family members or workplace colleagues (who are not more senior). To ensure we process your application in a speedy and efficient way, we will contact your referees by DocuSign. Where appropriate, please inform them of your application.

Additional Information

To access the Job Profile for this role, please follow the link below:-

Family Support Worker jopb profile

This position is subject to a DBS check.

Gloucestershire County Council is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people or vulnerable adults and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment.

We want to be an employer of choice, attracting and retaining excellent people to work for us, so that we can best serve all of Gloucestershire’s diverse communities.  Our promise to you is that we will provide an inclusive and supportive working environment that enables you to bring your whole self to work and realise your full potential.

It is a legal requirement, under the Immigration Act 2016, that anyone appointed to a ‘customer facing role’ must be able to demonstrate an ability to fulfil all spoken aspects of the role with confidence in fluent English.

Hybrid working arrangements are available for the majority of our roles, giving teams the opportunity to work in a way that suits them, balancing service need and individual choice, with a mix of both remote and office working.