Senior Practitioner

About Us:

THE EXTRAORDINARY STORY OF SHOFA’S MARKET
Children’s Services in Westminster City Council is a world of extraordinary stories. Where courageous and inspiring professionals bring everything to their work.
Sometimes this even includes heartbreak. Shofa is a shining example. Shofa’s brother suffered with his mental health and died tragically young. She uses his memory as motivation to give Westminster Youth Council members the opportunity to have a voice and get involved in decision-making. This passion resulted in her innovation: The Westminster Youth Market. Here local teenagers learn about entrepreneurship and develop their personal skills. This is an inclusive platform where everyone’s contribution and abilities are celebrated. Inspired by a promising life cut short, Shofa believes without vision there is no direction and every young person should be supported to realise their dreams.
Please view the extraordinary story of Shofa’s Market here.

The Role:

Joining our Intensive Support Team (IST) as a Senior Family Practitioner, you can make your own powerful contribution to the lives of young people, engaging at points of crisis to help families stay together. You’ll support families who are experiencing multiple difficulties and disadvantages to improve relationships, become more stable and confident and achieve their goals.
Managing up to three IST family practitioners, you will take the lead in collaborating with families to develop creative plans of intervention focused on young people aged 10-18. Features of cases include poor mental health, difficult relationships in the home, safety issues for young people in the community and other safeguarding issues such as substance misuse and domestic violence.
We’ll train you in the use of a range of approaches including compassion focused therapy (CFT), systemic family therapy, non-violent resistance (NVR), trauma-informed approaches and cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). You will also have the support of a dedicated clinical psychologist and systemic practitioner, along with wider backing from a multi-agency network including CAMHS and schools.
Please refer to the Job Description for more information.

About You:

As part of a part of our welcoming, friendly compassionate and respectful team, you will balance direct work with supervisory responsibilities. This role would therefore suit an experienced practitioner who is ready to step into a leadership position. You’re likely to have a background in family support, youth work, youth justice or social care, including relevant professional qualifications. Along with skills in relationship-building and partnership working, you will bring a creative, sensitive and thoughtful approach to engaging with families. Ready to inspire and develop others, you’ll also be highly organised and have the confidence to manage communication and boundaries with families effectively.

What We Offer:

Westminster is an amazing place. We are home to more than 200,000 residents from all backgrounds, over 50,000 vibrant and vital businesses and three-quarters-of-a-million people work in Westminster. Westminster City Council’s strategy is to work towards a Fairer Westminster. A Fairer Westminster is one in which our communities are at the heart of our decision-making and help to determine the city’s future. By working directly with our communities and other partners, we can build a more inclusive city that celebrates our diverse communities, and where residents, workers and visitors from all backgrounds will feel welcome and safe.
At Westminster City Council, we pride ourselves on being an inclusive workplace and employer of choice. We encourage and welcome applications from people from all backgrounds and aim to have a workforce that, at all levels, represents the communities we serve. We champion equality, diversity, inclusion and wellbeing and aim to create a workplace where everyone feels valued, has a sense of belonging and is empowered to be their best, that is the Westminster Way. To find out more about how we do this visit https://www.westminster.gov.uk/health-and-social-care/public-health-strategy-policies-and-reports/equality-duties
As a forward-thinking Council we appreciate that people work in different ways, therefore our staff benefit from working a range of flexible working patterns as well as Agile working.
The Council is a Disability Confident Employer. If you have declared a disability in your application, we guarantee an interview if you meet the essential criteria of the job. If you are invited for interview, you will be asked if you need any reasonable adjustments in order to attend, and we will make these wherever possible.