Family Coach

Southampton City Council, Pathways Through Care Team is a service passionate and striving to achieve the best outcomes for our children we care for. Building relationships that enable our children to feel and know that they are held in mind is important to us. Working closely with partnership agencies to provide high challenge and high support, building strong relationships between practitioners and their families, enabling systemic and reflective work with our children and their networks alongside these strong relationships is also a priority. This vacancy is a rare opportunity for any applicant who has passion and strength-based approach when they are working with children and their families. The vacancy within this part of the service will be your opportunity to build meaningful and influential relationships with the children we care for and help give you the sense of being able to make the difference. In June 2023, Ofsted saw strong evidence that: "The experiences and progress of children in care are good. Improvements to the quality of support provided to children in care have accelerated recently. Careful and successful workforce recruitment, a comprehensive strategy to improve children's placement stability and an impressive level of meaningful engagement by senior leaders with children in care all provide a firm foundation for further improvements". One of our major focuses for the successful Family Coach is to ensure that we are providing stability to children and always achieving the right permanence for them. Family is important, and alongside ensuring permanence whilst in our care is the ongoing focus for us to ensure that we have the right plan for your children and that we promote identity and sense of belonging wherever possible. Making strong and memorable relationships, this service also gives creative and restorative practitioners other opportunities to make the difference and to utilise their strong assessment skills in working with birth families to always consider whether the right permanence is in place for our children. There are strong reunification drivers that help support children and young people to recognise their potential and make stronger links with immediate and extended family members as well as significant others in their lives. The Family Coach plays a vital and key role in these journeys supporting and moving towards restoring permanence with birth families. Southampton are strongly invested in development of their staff. With the support provided by the newly formed practice development team led by the Principle Social worker, the services enjoys a good partnership which allows us to invest in bespoke training packages to enhance service delivery to our children. About the Service: The Children In Care Team supports children and young people who are looked after in foster care, cared for by connected carers or family, and specialist care which includes residential or semi-independent provisions. The service benefits from a permanent management team who have a wide range of experience from different service areas as well as two service leads who are visible and approachable. There are 5 teams within the one service - 2 of which are for young people who are care experienced, 1 team has specialisms of working with children who are unaccompanied in the UK and two other teams with respective managers where they support social workers who work with our children in care under the age of 18. The Family Coach will be a member of one of these teams. The service prides itself on having a cohesive and friendly feel who offer support to team members. Our service is child focused and strive for each child or young person to be the best person they can be., The successful Family Coach will spend a good amount of their time supporting Children in Care who live in fostering, residential or semi-independent homes. The role will have a focus in their work supporting children and young people's identity and opportunity to consider reunification home to their families. Leading up to reunification plans and significantly post reunification ensuring that the support once the child returns home is in place and meaningful building on relationships, that ensure the final goal when it is safe and appropriate to do so ending and revocation of local authority involvement. Who are we looking for? We are looking for a practitioner who is reflective and assured in their practice and ideally would have had some experience of direct work with children in care. You will build relationships through regular visits. You will nurture and develop meaningful relationships with children; gain and interpret their wishes, and advocate and support them to reach their full potential. Support We want to continually improve and show our children that we are aspirational for them and what they can achieve in their relationships, communities, education, training, and life's adventures. The work is varied and challenging, and there is a strong team approach ensuring good support for the successful applicant. There maybe the opportunity to specialize with our increasing support and allocation of Unaccompanied Asylum seeking children. This is a new strand to our service, which is being fully embraced and offers further developmental opportunities on top of the training and focus on learning that is offered service wide. Life story work, the narrative of the child and ensuring we work from a strengthening families base and of equal measure being trauma informed in our support to our children is a necessity. You will have experience of working with children and families and have formal qualifications in related courses. Please refer to the attached job description for the essential and desirable elements to apply for these roles. Rewards:

• As Ofsted has stated in our inspection in June 2023 where we achieved a Good grading: 'Practitioners are supported by energetic and responsive frontline managers who maintain clear, confident and close oversight of children's progress'. You will be provided with regular good quality 1-1 case and personal supervision that align to restorative principles.
• Laptop and mobile phone will be provided to support with work.
• Robust induction period and personal development plan that meets your training and development needs. You will have membership to Research in Practice as well as access to an internal resource library.
• Ongoing training is important to us and professional development.
• Opportunities are also offered to flexible working arrangements. The 9 day fortnight is offered.
• Paid leave (up to 33 days excluding bank holidays dependent on length of service) and flexible arrangements).
• Discounted rail fares, paid parking and access to the Councils bicycle loan scheme.
• Opportunities to engage in work-based activities well- being and be recognised for the work that you do through our employment awards and recognition schemes, For further information and details regarding the position please contact Service Manager Ellie Steel ; or Team Manager Rebecca Bohan and either one of the managers will be able to respond to your email and arrange a call if needed.
  
  You will be based within Southampton city centre in the Civic Centre, a historical building within easy reach of a range of colleagues also based in the building. Some flexible/remote/home working is available.
Our Organisation: Southampton City Council is a unitary authority, as such you will have access to responsive leadership which is supportive at all management levels. We are committed to the development of all our staff, whilst working in a highly supportive and highly challenging culture. All of which is at the ethos of our ambition to become a child friendly city.