Full Time and Part Time / 37, 30 and 18.5 Hours Per Week / Permanent
Are you a dedicated, energetic and empathetic individual who is committed to achieving the best outcomes for children and their families?
We are looking for a Contact and Assessment Worker to predominantly supervise contacts between children in care and their parents/carers and undertake parenting assessments within the Contact Service, amongst other duties.
The Contact Service Team provides a flexible & quality service for children in care, their parents, carers and Social Workers. We ensure safe contact between families and their children as well as educate parents to be able to provide the right care for their children, so that they can remain in their care or be returned to their care.
The team consists of 17 full time contact and assessment workers, two admin operatives, two commissionaires and one housekeeper, there are 5 assistant managers and a Team manager.
We are a large team, and we are united, we share the same vision as to why we are here, the child’s voice is paramount as is our drive to keep all children safe from harm.
Our aim is to provide a safe environment for all children, where fun, creativity and laughter can be heard and seen, where our dedicated staff team use their shared skills so that “family time” is a time that everyone enjoys.
We’re currently recruiting for one full time (37 hours) and two part time (30 hours and 18.5 hours) permanent Contact and Assessment worker to be based St. Andrews Contact Service. However, you may be required to work across the city to attend meetings in relation to families, visit families in their homes and also travel out of the County. You’ll need to be flexible and willing to work on a rota basis from the hours of 7.30am to 6.30pm Monday to Friday.
What you’ll be doing
You’ll supervise, monitor, assess and evaluate contacts between children, parents, and other family members, which form part of wider assessment processes e.g. for Social Workers and the courts. You’ll develop positive and sensitive relationships with children and their families, providing them with support, training, and advice on parenting skills within agreed programmes of work, including parent’s groups and work with them on a one to one basis. Using your excellent IT skills, you’ll maintain accurate written records of contact sessions, parenting assessments, as well as produce reports on a regular basis.
In addition, you’ll work closely with colleagues within the Contact Centre, Social Workers, and other professionals to ensure that the Council’s statutory child protection/safeguarding duties are fulfilled.
The contact service is a fast changing environment and you will be expected to switch and change from one task to another, depending on the circumstances at the time, there will be changes in your daily duties, which can happen on a regular bases and being able to adapt is a crucial element of the role.
You’ll share tasks of chairing team meetings, peer groups and reading out your reports within review settings, this will enable you to show and develop your confidence and manage group settlings when needed.
What you’ll need
As the successful candidate you’ll need previous work experience working with children under the age of 8 years of age. You’ll also have experience of working children and families from a variety of backgrounds. You’ll need knowledge in child development and how parenting impacts on child development as well as hold an NNEB certificate, NVQ Level 3 or BTEC Diploma in caring studies or equivalent. With your ability to communicate in both formal and informal settings, you’ll be able to effectively facilitate contacts between children and their families, and deal with people professionally at all levels, you will be able to defuse situations, challenge undesired behaviour and safeguard at all times. With your ability and knowledge around a PC including IT systems, you will find it easy navigating your way around the different programmes and forms that need to be used during your working day, this will also help you to be able to put together forms and processes that are needed when completing court reports for the families. Due to the complexities of our parents, you’ll need to have great communication skills, pick up on nonverbal communication as well as verbal communication and have the confidence to challenge when needed and knowing when that’s safe to do so.
Due to having your own car, you will need to transport children to contacts and different venues, which enables the child to build that familiarisation with yourself and prevents them from being in contact with lots of different individuals. To be able to do this safely you’ll need your own car, a clean full driving licence and the right business insurance that includes carrying people/children. In addition, due to the nature of this post it is subject to an Enhanced DBS check.
What we can offer you
As well as the satisfaction of helping to improve thousands of lives across Leicester, you can look forward to a work environment that encourages a healthy work/life balance. You’ll enjoy generous annual leave, membership of the Local Government Pension Scheme and some option of flexible working. We’ll also give you the chance to develop your skills and expertise with a variety of training and development opportunities. In addition, you can choose from several flexible benefits, including discounts on city buses and trains. For an illustrative value of your benefits package, take a look at our benefits calculator.
Join us
We’re committed to recruiting a diverse and highly-talented workforce as we continue to build a council that is fitting and representative of our great city. That’s why we’ve designed our recruitment process to put you at your ease, make you feel welcome and bring the best out of you. We’ll do all we can to make our recruitment process as fair as possible. To help you with your application, take a look at the ‘our approach to recruitment’ page.
For an informal discussion, or further information regarding this job please contact Catherine Liquorish by email to catherine.liquorish@leicester.gov.uk or call 0116 2232280.
Interviews will take place on Tuesday 4th October 2022.