Family Support Practitioner

At Bath & North East Somerset Council we have one overriding purpose – to improve people’s lives.

If your passion is around collaborative work with families, children and carers, centred on building relationships in order to help families develop resilience and promote stability, then we are the Local Authority for you. Working with families to keep children at home wherever possible, our dynamic teams also work with kinship caring and fostering households. Our practice model is underpinned by relationship-based, systemic approaches to facilitate change, alongside trauma informed practice.

Bath and North East Somerset Children’s Social Care are an innovative small Local Authority focused on therapeutic assessment and support. Rated Good by OFSTED, with continued vision and drive to improve further.

An exciting opportunity has arisen for a Family Support Practitioner to join our Alternative Care Team, within the Care Outcomes Service. We are committed to being a dynamic and creative Local Authority, working hard to think differently about how we approach our work with families. We are deeply committed to providing tailored high quality services and well thought out interventions to families to keep children safe.

Our practice is values-driven with a strong ethos of child‑focussed interventions which support carers to meet children’s needs. As a Local Authority we work hard to support children and families at an early stage; we are committed to providing the best outcomes for our children and young people.

You will work in partnership with an enthusiastic team overseen by a Team Manager and Deputy Team Manager, and alongside Senior Practitioners, qualified professional Social Workers and Family Support Practitioners as well as Administrative and Marketing staff.

This rewarding role will see you responding to, co‑ordinating and delivering a range of social care services to children, young people and families in the Bath and North East Somerset area for children in care and children living in other kinship arrangements. We work closely with our colleagues across the service and have established partnerships with agencies across health, education, support services and adult services to ensure we can respond as effectively as possible to the needs of children, young people, and their families.

We are seeking applications from workers who have relevant experience and a specific interest in this area of work and are looking to enhance and further develop their skills and contribute to service development for vulnerable children.

• A comprehensive induction.
• Managed caseload, with a variety of support and interventions for children.
• Regular supervision, at a minimum of monthly one to one.
• Weekly group supervision to promote thoughtful and creative practice, supported by your peers and managers.
• Monthly Peer Circles to ensure strong relationships and support between Family Support Practitioners across the teams, and to share good practice.
• Excellent administrative support.
• Ongoing training, which may include Video Interactive Guidance, Theraplay, Therapeutic Life Story Work and other relevant interventions to best support the families you are working with.
• Future opportunities for career development, including the Social Work Apprenticeship degree.

You will have relevant experience of working with vulnerable children, young people and families and a specific interest in this area of work. You will be looking to enhance and further develop your skills while contributing to service development for vulnerable children.

If your passion is around collaborative work with families, children and carers, centred on building relationships in order to help families…