Neurodevelopment Family Navigator

**Do you live or work in Kirklees and are you interested in helping local families who are waiting for an assessment on their child? Do you have experience of working with parents and want to offer support in Kirklees?**

**Help parents understand the assessment process, be a listening ear when they need to talk about how they are finding working with all these different professionals?**

**Have you had to work out what to say to health, education and social care professionals to try to get the right support for your child/ relative/friend?**

**Do you want to be able to work flexibly for 14 hours per week?**

**We will consider a secondment for this role. Please speak to your line manager.**

**Our Pilot is recruiting, and this could be the next role for you.**

**You will be based in Kirklees, being supported by other Navigators in Bradford, Leeds and Calderdale. We already have a part-time Navigator in Kirklees and you will work closely together.**

As our Kirklees Navigator you will listen to parents and offer emotional support. You could be an experienced family support worker or even have experience of working in a school setting working with children and young people with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and their parents in your local community.

You could have lived experience of neurodivergence, either your own or with family members that would make you an asset in supporting others.

You will have experience and knowledge of navigating local services and systems and understand the importance of empowering families and support them to self-advocate.

You will have the opportunity to build strong working relationships with the school-age neurodevelopmental assessment team, and as part of your induction you will develop an understand the importance of collaboration.

Through the induction process and learning, you will understand that families on the waiting list experience high level so distress and stress and being able to work with them on their goals for up to three sessions so they can prioritise what is happening in their lives. Although this is not a counselling role, having an understanding of counselling skills will be an asset.

You will be provided opportunities to learn how to offer support, signposting and information on the assessment process in Kirklees, support parents through wait times, support understanding on what to expect, someone to listen and offer ideas and connect to their local community.

This role will offer support, help work through the system, provide listening support and signposting whilst families are on waiting lists to prevent crisis and things getting worse.

**This role provides an opportunity for you to work flexibly - this can include part-time hours, term time only, working condensed hours and where needed offering families support during evenings and weekends. You will be offered a robust induction by Barnardo's and Children and Young People Neurodevelopmental Service **Kirklees**.**

As a** Navigator** you will:

- Have strong listening skills and ability to offer emotional support.
- Learn how to provide pre-diagnosis peer support - this includes
- Introduce those parents who have experienced the pre-assessment process and support to help improve service experience.
- Prevent potential crisis and family life becoming difficult by supporting wellbeing or the family.
- Involve parents/carers in improving service delivery.
- Have relevant information and signposting to local community support.

Barnardo's currently provide the West Yorkshire Keyworker Pilot and as Navigators you will work with the team to develop and deliver this additional work.

This is a pilot which will also be independently evaluated.

As a Navigator you will work with parents to support them as well as offer training for meaningful parental involvement and help us to understand how the service needs to change to meet need as we learn from the experiences you hold.

We want to recruit Navigators that are reflective of the communities they work in, considering culture, language and the diverse population and communities we will be working in.

In your role you will be:

- Compassionate, approachable, person centred, solution focused and creative about supporting children, young people and their families.
- Non-judgemental / respectful
- Honest and transparent
- Supportive in your approach
- Treat parents/carers as equals
- Value lived experience, be a good listener when parents are distressed, offering to be there when parent need to be heard.
- Wanting to make things better for every child and young person and their families
- Passionate that people reach their potential and have the best life they want.
- Providing pre-assessment support to parents and carers
- Hold knowledge or willing to learn of local information and ability to signpost parents and carers to local support available to them, this can also include introducing them to services and support them to acces