About the Role:
We are looking for a dedicated Family Help Practitioner to join the Single Point of Access Team in Reading Borough Council.
Contracted Hours: 37 hours per week (Full-Time)
This role will be based within the Children’s Single Point of Access:
The Children’s Single Point of Access (Front Door) provides a multi-disciplinary, integrated approach to receive and triage contacts from professionals and members of the public who are requesting support or have concerns about a child’s welfare and safety. The integrated approach ensures information gathering is rapid, relevant and supports timely decision making. With a refreshed focus on contextual safeguarding, decision making at the front door will consistently apply threshold to deliver the right intervention at the right time for children and families.
The Family Help Practitioners will work to a shared set of responsibilities, but with specialist skills, knowledge and experience in service areas spanning Early Intervention, Education and Social Care. They will collect, collate and analyse information from a range of sources including other professionals and where appropriate visits to family homes. Practitioners will support a family’s seamless journey to Partnership support, Targeted Family Help, Partnership Hubs and statutory social care.
Key Responsibilities:
- Have a robust understanding and ability to apply threshold decisions within limited timescales.
- Undertake screening of Family Help referrals and step down from Social Work screening to Family Help for screening.
- Review the referral information and history of Children Social Care (CSC) and Family Help involvement and complete the chronology.
- Contact parents/carers and professionals to explore the referral information with them to identify the appropriate service or support.
- Develop & maintain constructive relationships with a broad range of internal and external stakeholders from different teams, agencies and local authorities.
- Through liaison, dialogue and searching collect and collate relevant information to support 24-hour decision making & appropriate pathways
- Where appropriate meet with parents who walk in to the service to collate information to add to the Multi Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH) and Family Help decision making.
- Write letters to the families to advise of the outcome of screening and to sign post to further support.
- To support the CSPoA specialism lead and be responsible for ensuring that the the information held by the team is up to date and links to the appropriate Family Help offer.
- Record interpret and analyze information/issues to assess the risks and needs of the child/young person. This may involve disclosing proportionate and relevant information related to the parents/careers or siblings.
- To provide practical support, consultation and advice to practitioners from all agencies in relation to integrated working processes to ensure that families receive appropriate and timely support
- To attend meetings in relation to their specialism and feedback to the CSPoA team.
- To deliver a presentation in reflective group practice.
- To ensure that recording is of the highest quality, undertaken in a timely manner and stored on the appropriate data recording system(s).
- To support internal and external partners to ensure that families are signposted to the most appropriate services via telephone and/or at meetings.
- Escalate evidence of ineffective safeguarding arrangements within or outside the Single Front Door to Managers.
- Immediately report to senior managers where issues require escalation.
- To participate in individual supervision sessions and team meetings.
- To attend relevant training and seek continuous professional development.
- Demonstrate through personal and professional example a commitment to equality of opportunity for all groups of staff and service users and challenge discrimination, racism, sexism and other forms of unjust behavior.
- To carry out duties with full regard to the Company’s Policies and procedures including the LSCB Safeguarding procedures.
- To undertake screening of all cases that come through the front door (CSPOA) where Family Help has been requested or identified.
- To maintain standards of service in line with Brighter Futures for Children policies and procedures.
- A commitment to inclusive practice & confidence to embed anti discriminatory practice into daily work.
- To ensure practice is in accordance with legislation and the Brighter Futures for Children’s policies and procedures with particular reference to Health & Safety, Child Protection and safeguarding children.
- To take reasonable care of your own health and safety and co-operate with management, so far is necessary, to enable compliance with the company’s health and safety rules and legislative requirements
- To undertake such personal training as may be deemed necessary to meet the duties and responsibilities of the post
- Brighter Futures for Children is a dynamic organisation which recognises the need to respond flexibly to changing demands and circumstances. While this job description provides a summary of functions and responsibilities of the post, this may need to be adapted or adjusted to meet changing circumstances. Such changes would be commensurate with the grading of the post.
- To liaise with professionals and partner agencies to identify the needs of the family and the appropriate support, ensuring that there are no safeguarding concerns and that tier 2 threshold has been met
- Engage with Families and young people as part of the screening process to challenge and offer support and advice. This will include identifying any support that is available from the Family Help offer or sign post to external agencies.
- Have an up to date knowledge/training on the Family Help processes and time frames/waiting time for support to be offered
- To have an up to date knowledge of the Local offer and community resources, this includes the threshold and referral processes and to ensure that the CSPoA team are kept informed of any changes.
- Excepted to work independently and perform visit based on direction from the management to the child and family as required
- Required to draw recommendation from the assessment carried out when on visit
- To write clear and evidenced based screening of referrals, to include reflection, evidence, analysis and recommendation
- Required to work alongside other professional in contribution to the daily MASH meeting
- Required to take own incentive as at when required during assessment and intervention.
Requirements:
- Qualified Social Worker
- Registered with Social Work England
- Eligible to work in the UK
Interested?
For more information on this role or to apply, get in touch with our vendor department who will arrange for a specialist consultant to get in contact with you:
0203 906 8670