Fostering Practitioner

Full Time – 37 Hours per week

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. We are delivering the Families First for Children programme and also the Kinship strategy to achieve the best outcomes for the children and families that we work with.

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 Fostering Practitioners who have experience of working with adults and children with an understanding of Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy and PACE and who share our vision about providing an outstanding level of support to all our foster carers.

The successful applicant will be responsible for supporting our fostering households to ensure stability for our children through targeted support with therapeutic parenting being a central model to ensure positive outcomes for our children and foster carers.

The Fostering Practitioners will also be expected to deliver training and support to other services and applicants and carers, to develop more cohesive working, as well as being part of meetings and forums to raise the profile of Telford Fostering.

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 Mainstream Fostering team work closely and cooperatively with colleagues within the Family & Friends support team as well as with Social Workers and managers from other 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
• Essential car user allowance
• 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 for the second time! Here’s just some of the great things Ofsted had to say when they visited us in April 2024:

Children and families in Telford and Wrekin continue to experience exceptional social work practice when they are in care and as care leavers.

Participation is a real strength and children’s and families’ involvement is threaded throughout service developments.

Social workers know their children well and have developed effective relationships with parents.

The virtual school is a significant strength in Telford and Wrekin.

Care leavers benefit from an extremely comprehensive and generous local offer.

Corporate parenting is a strength in Telford and Wrekin.

The stability of the experienced workforce creates the perfect environment to benefit children and care leavers. As a result, social workers maintain relationships with children who know them over many years, which contributes to children’s feeling of belonging.

Staff enjoy working in an environment where senior leaders are visible, and they feel valued.

If you share our passion for making a difference, we would be delighted if you joined us.

We are committed to equality and diversity. Posts working with children or vulnerable groups will be subject to an appropriate criminal records check.

If you think you can meet the challenge and would like to find out more about this…