fostering placements officer

There has never been a more exciting time to join our service: alongside making a difference to the lives of individuals and families, we have adopted exciting new strengths-based approaches and are passionate about delivering continuous service improvement. In this role, you will be part of our innovative and forward-thinking Fostering Service. We are an ambitious and aspirational service. We are looking for a fostering placements officer that has an interest in ensuring that our children are appropriately matched and placed with internal foster carers that can meet our children's needs. The successful applicant will be responsible for finding families for our children to live when they cant be cared for by their family. The role will also include ensuring that our carers are fully supported by identifying support at the point of a match being made. The successful applicant should have a skill to develop a strong and robust direct working relationship with all internal foster carers in order to speak to them on a daily basis to 'identify new placements, support carers to manage children's needs and ensure that foster carers are supported to fulfil their role as therapeutic foster carers. This post will include some evening and weekend working and responding to emergencies. Our team is very experienced, highly supportive, friendly and passionate about what we do. We work hard but also find time to celebrate achievements and good practice. The Recruitment and Family Finding team work closely and collaboratively with colleagues within the Mainstream Support and Supervision team, Kinship team as well as with Social Workers and managers from other areas of Children's Services. The work is interesting, often complex and challenging but is crucial to achieving placement stability and permanence for our children. The fostering service has a systemic practice approach, supporting our foster carers to parent therapeutically. Our brilliant practitioners are at the heart of our ambitious approach to improve outcomes for children and families in Telford and Wrekin: that's why from tailored in-house training to the West Midlands Teaching Partnership, we will ensure that you have access to the best development opportunities. We value our practitioners and offer staff rewards and plenty of opportunities for personal development and career progression including:

• Free on-site parking
• Flexible and mobile working policy - we are well adapted to a hybrid model of working which includes a combination of time spent in the office and at home - our approach is to promote greater level of flexible working around personal and family commitments
Here at Telford and Wrekin Council, we have been judged to be outstanding overall in terms of effectiveness (the only Authority in the West Midlands with this judgement). Here's just some of the great things Ofsted had to say when they visited us in 2024:
• children in care benefit from living in supportive permanent foster care homes which enable them to thrive both at home and at school or college
• where children have a plan of long-term fostering, social workers focus on securing permanence for them through matching with foster carers; children are cared for by foster carers who are appropriately skilled and fully supported to meet their individual needs
• the quality of fostering assessments is strong; foster carers are supported well and there is a comprehensive training offer for foster carers
• there is a strong learning culture within children's services.
If you share our passion for making a difference, we would be delighted if you joined us. For further information on the role please click on the links below to view the job description and person specification. We are committed to equality and diversity. Posts working with children or vulnerable groups will be subject to an appropriate criminal records check.

We've implemented a new system from Monday 4th March which will improve your candidate experience!, Telford & Wrekin Council is an award winning council, and we were recognised as Local Authority of the Year 2022 at the Municipal Journal Awards, and the Association for Public Service Excellence Council of the Year in 2021. At Team Telford we work hard to protect, care and invest to create a better borough and our employees are at the heart of everything we do. Having the right people, with the right skills, in the right roles allows us to deliver the excellent services that residents and businesses on the borough expect from us. Our friendly and passionate teams are trusted by leaders and managers to deliver this ambition. We invest and nurture our workforce and support our employees to develop and thrive. The better we are the bigger difference we make to the people we serve.

We reserve the right to close this vacancy early if we receive a high volume of suitable applicants. At Telford & Wrekin Council, we know that having a diverse workforce is key to providing the best possible services to our community. We celebrate having a diverse and inclusive culture where people are able to be themselves at work, and everyone has a voice. Posts working with children or vulnerable groups will be subject to an appropriate criminal records check. It is an offence to apply for a role that involves engaging in regulated activity with children and adults in vulnerable circumstances if you are barred from working with one or both of these groups. We value our employees and offer staff rewards and plenty of opportunities for personal development and career progression including:
• Competitive rates of pay
• Automatic access to a secure, flexible and tax efficient Local Government Pension Scheme
• Staff benefits and discounts including salary sacrifice schemes
• Free on-site parking
• Generous leave entitlement (24 days rising to 32 days) plus 8 bank holidays and an additional concessionary day
• Free access to our employee assistance programme and confidential counselling
• Flexible and mobile working policy - we are well adapted to a hybrid model of working which includes a combination of time spent in the office and at home - our approach is to promote greater level of flexible working around personal and family commitments, In return we also offer a great range of benefits including competitive salaries, flexible working hours and work arrangements, employee discounts, salary sacrifice schemes, a local government pension scheme and generous annual leave entitlement.
At Telford & Wrekin Council, we know that having a diverse workforce is key to providing the best possible services to our community. We celebrate having a diverse and inclusive culture where people are able to be themselves at work, and everyone has a voice and we know we are stronger and better connected as a result. We welcome applications from people from all backgrounds and where our data shows that specific groups are under-represented within our workforce, our adverts will actively encourage applications from these groups. We are also proud to be a Disability Confident Employer, committed to recruiting and retaining people with disabilities or other health conditions. You can find out more about this and our 'guaranteed interview scheme' here You can also read more about our Recruitment and Selection Policy and Recruitment of Ex-Offenders here and the Transgender & Non-Binary Inclusion Policy commitments here