Placement Officer

This is a Gloucestershire County Council job.
 

• Job Title:                            Placement Officer
• Job Location:                     Westgate Street, Gloucester 
• Salary:                               £32,115 - £35,235 per annum 
• Hours per Week:               37.00 
• Contract Type:                   Permanent 
• Closing Date:                     26/01/2025 
• Job Requisition Number:   10408 
• This post is open to job share

We are currently recruiting for a Placement Finding Officer to join our Fostering Support 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. We are 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.

About the team

The fostering support teams are made up of 1 Team Manager, 6 Social Workers, 2 Placement Finding Officers, 1 Administrator and 1 Family Support Worker. Working together, the team take referrals for foster care placements, identify and analyse potential risks and work to match children and young people to one of our 38 fostering households as well as  supported lodgings ensuring quality fostering provisions.

About you

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
• the ability to work flexibly as occasional evening and weekend work is required
• the ability to manage emergency requests in a timely and calm manner and present information clearly, concisely and accurately

How to apply

For an informal chat about this role, please contact Jeannette Carroll on Jeanette.Carroll@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.

Additional Information

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

Fostering Placement Finding Officer job 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.

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.