Child Practitioner

About the role
Do you have experience working with vulnerable young people and want to make a difference to their lives?

We are looking for passionate, committed, and enthusiastic individuals to join us as Child Practitioners in our Adolescent Team. The young people we support are usually aged 12-17 and could be homeless due a family breakdown, experience mental ill health, or are vulnerable to criminal or sexual exploitation.

We have recently joined the Youth Support Service which means we are closely aligned with the Youth Justice Service (YJS) and SAFE team, who work with young people involved in criminal exploitation. As a result of these increasingly close links, as a Child Practitioner you will be working alongside Social Workers, police officers, health workers, psychologists, education workers, substance misuse workers, and many others.

We work in a trauma informed way, having regular reflective practice sessions to support you and allow time to consider approaches. We have extensive support from senior management to ensure that we are able to deliver effective interventions that make a difference for young people and their families, in all aspects of their lives.

With our recent changes, now is a great time to join us and be part of these exciting developments.

What will you be doing?
As a Child Practitioner you will:

- Hold a caseload supporting young people and their families for typically 3-6 months but could be as long as a year.
- Work with professionals across the community, both internally and externally, to produce bespoke support for the young person and their family according to their situation.
- Support parents in finding solutions for their child where there is significant emotional pressure due to a risk of a family breakdown or homelessness, or on discharge from mental health provision.
- Be working across a variety of legislations relevant to Childrens and Adults services.
- Arrange and chair meetings with other professionals such as Child in Need and Multi-Disciplinary, as well as attend Risk Planning meetings with the Youth Justice Service to discuss a young person’s offending behaviour.
- Build meaningful and trusting relationships with complex young people and be resilient if certain methods do not work.

About you
We're looking for confident and dynamic individuals who enjoy making a difference in their local community, are curious and spot things that others might not see, enjoys building relationships and likes to explore possibilities.

The role of the Child Practitioner in the Adolescent Team is fast-paced and would suit individuals with experience of:

- Responding to crisis
- Working with young people with complex needs and an experience of trauma
- Working with vulnerable individuals at risk of exploitation due to a range of issues including drug misuse
- The diversity of our community and how socio-economic factors can affect young people

You must:

- Have the ability to work from a variety of locations and travel countywide independently

For a full list of the requirements of the role, please check out the Job Description & Person Specification.

We want to hear from you about how you want to work that would help to bring your best self to Cambridgeshire. Prefer to work 37 hours over 4 days? Want to work 25 hours? Looking for a role where you can be flexible around commitments outside of work? Get in touch today and let’s have a chat about the right working pattern for you

About us
Cambridgeshire is a great place to work and live with a diverse population, an urban centre in Cambridge, historic Isle of Ely, Huntingdon and St Ives as well as more rural landscapes.

Our four values are central to our culture, driving everything we do.

We are proud to serve the diverse communities of Cambridgeshire and want our workforce to be reflective of this diversity, which we believe benefits our employees, the organisation and our communities.

Visit our jobs and careers section to find out more about our wide range of learning and development opportunities; apprenticeships; our wellbeing package; staff benefits; our commitment to equality, diversity and Inclusion.

Our benefits
We value our colleagues in Cambridgeshire County Council and have developed a number of benefits:

- Flexible working
- Flexible Bank Holidays
- A comprehensive wellbeing package
- Our Cambs Rewards employee discounts
- A comprehensive pension scheme.
- IDEAL staff equality, diversity and inclusion network.
- Camweb our staff intranet helping to keep you informed
- An employee recognition scheme