Practitioner

EdShift is an arts-based charity supporting children and young people affected by domestic abuse. Our work sits at the intersection of creativity and care, creating spaces where children can feel safe, express themselves, and begin to make sense of their experiences through imaginative and relational practice.

Community Practitioners work directly with children and young people who are dealing with trauma, stemming from exposure to domestic abuse, delivering trauma-informed and relational support across community settings. While practitioners may predominantly deliver within specific programmes (such as Spotlight), this is a whole-organisation role, requiring flexibility, collaboration, and a willingness to contribute across areas of work.

This work involves supporting children who have lived with fear, harm, and instability. There are moments where practitioners will hold complex and distressing material, and this requires emotional resilience, professional self-awareness, and clear boundaries.

At the same time, much of the day-to-day work is grounded, creative, and connective. Practitioners often spend time sitting alongside children, drawing, making, talking, playing, and exploring, using arts-based tools as an alternative and accessible gateway for children to express their thoughts, feelings, and experiences.

Community Practitioners carry a “Mary Poppins bag” of creative resources into sessions, materials such as clay, sand, gems, and art tools, which help create spaces of curiosity, joy, imagination, and trust. These ordinary, relational moments are central to the work and are often where connection, regulation, and change begin.

EdShift is explicit about both the challenges and the support structures within this role. We have robust frameworks in place, including:

• Weekly safeguarding and case discussion meetings

These frameworks are designed to support safe, ethical, and sustainable practice. They enable practitioners to engage meaningfully with the work, reflect on complexity, and maintain professional accountability, while recognising that the emotional responsibility of the role remains real.

We are seeking Community Practitioners who:

• Are drawn to arts-based practice as a way of building connection and supporting children’s expression and healing
• Understand the impact of trauma on children and young people and can work thoughtfully with complexity
• Are able to hold challenging material while remaining grounded, regulated, and boundaried
• Use supervision and reflective spaces proactively as professional tools
• Value creativity, play, and imagination alongside safety, structure, and accountability

Resilience in this role means being able to hold both the joy and the difficulty of the work and to do so within a supportive organisational framework.