Family Coach

We are the difference for Children in Care and Care Leavers.

Family Coach Opportunity in Southampton

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 and has arisen from a focus on wanting to provide our families with enhanced support prior to considering reunification and during the reunification process. This post will be ideal for any applicant who has passion and a strength-based approach when working with children and their families. It will be an opportunity to build meaningful and influential relationships with the children and their families during a crucial and pivotal moment in their care journey.

There is a strong focus on reunification for our children when it is safe and appropriate to do so and this will be a large part of the work the family coach will be an integral part of. Supporting with life story work and narratives for children will also form part of this role.

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 our 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 practice development team and 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.

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 a service manager who is visible and approachable. There are 3 teams within the children in care service. The Family Coach will be a member of one of these teams. We also work closely with our colleagues in the care leavers service and the UASC team who form part of our service area.

The service prides itself on having a cohesive and friendly feel who offer support to team members. Our service is child focussed and strives 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…