Family Front Door Practitioner

This is an exciting opportunity to join the Family Front Door Team which is the ‘Front Door’ for statutory social care and early help services in Somerset, based at Express Park Bridgwater, co located with partner agencies.

This is a well respected team who triage request for involvement for the Family Intervention Service and work closely with them and social work colleagues.

The Family Front Door is a fast paced and exciting team ensuring that the children and families that we work with receive the right service the first time. Family Front Door Practitioners review Early Help Assessments that are submitted for the Family Intervention Service, gather information in order to assess and make recommendations as to whether this is the required outcome, or alternatively if the family needs to be sign posted to another agency to meet the families needs.

The role will include partnership engagement, offering advice and guidance in implementing Somerset’s continuum of need as identified in the SSCP document “Effective Support for Children & Families” and ensuring the effective operation of the Early Help Assessment.

We recognise the need for continuing professional development and support practitioners with developing their skills and career progression. There are regular CPD sessions held internally which are contributed to by social workers and also external agencies.

As part of your role, you will respond to request for intervention for the Family Intervention Service for children aged 0-25.

You will be expected to liaise with members of the public and professionals over the telephone in order to gather and assess information to determine what level of intervention is required. You will work on a rota system within the team, which allows for variation and development of skills including duty, consultation and quality assurance work.

You will:

• Champion Early Help in a variety of settings.
• Have experience of supporting children with disabilities and/or additional needs and their families.
• Promote integrated working.
• Provide support, advice and guidance in relation to the Early Help Assessment (EHA) and the Continuum of Need and Intervention.
• Assist in the assessment of need, planning and review of Early Help services
• Form effective working relationships with partners and colleagues.
• Take responsibility for your own work and demonstrate a willingness to learn from others and from experience.
• Understand and adopt anti-discriminatory practice.
• Make decisions and giving advice and guidance when professionals submit Early Help Assessments (EHA) requesting Family Intervention Support for a child or young person.
• Have a solid knowledge of the ‘Effective Support for Children and Families’ document and being able to apply this.
• Ensure the provision of a duty rota providing advice to a range of front line staff regarding the processes for making referrals, advice on completing an EHA and signposting to early help services available within Somerset.

The role also involves speaking with service users and using feedback from service users to inform decision making regarding referrals and to inform service improvement.

Family Front Door Practitioners also have a responsibility for championing the EHA in multi-agency forums, making necessary amendments to the EHA and ensuring that guidance on Professional Choices is up to date. There is the opportunity to be involved in quality assurance work with partner agencies to help improve the quality of EHA’s being submitted to ensure that children and young people are getting the right service.

We are proud to offer an environment that is supportive and rewarding, working as part of a team who are passionate about the work they do to improve the lives of people in Somerset. We offer great training and development opportunities, with supportive management. As well as this, we have some fantastic employee benefits available:

• We promote a healthy work-life balance and offer flexible working arrangements wherever possible, including working from home.
• Generous annual leave allowance, with the opportunity to purchase additional leave.
• Staff discounts in gyms.
• Employee Assistance for the times you may need some support and a variety of employee wellbeing services.
• Auto enrolment onto our generous Pension Scheme and optional pension enhancement through our Additional Voluntary Contribution scheme.
• A Flexible Benefits Scheme via salary sacrifice to obtain a cycle for work and health screenings.
• My Staff Shop offering discounts in shops, online shopping, restaurants, cinema tickets, insurance benefits and more.

The salary range for this role is £30,296 to £33,945 per annum

For further information or an informal discussion about this exciting opportunity, please contact:

Hannah Crothers, Team Manager on 01278 447536 or via email hannah.crothers@somerset.gov.uk

We anticipate offering and conducting interviews ahead of the closing date for suitable candidates.

If you have all the information you need, just hit the apply button. We can’t wait to hear from you.

Somerset are a hugely ambitious council, committed to improving lives for the residents, communities and businesses of Somerset.

And that’s why we’re working so hard to build a sustainable organisation with a culture that rewards, values and recognises our staff, and gives everyone here the opportunity to grow and develop, personally and professionally.

If you’re looking for a place where your work truly matters – where YOU truly matter – we might be just right for you.

We also promote a healthy work-life balance and offer flexible working arrangements wherever possible, including working from home.

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