Pastoral Assistant

**Those Huge Small Victories**

For children with complex, challenging needs, the level of care and education must go above and beyond. That’s what drives us, here at Witherslack Group. With our high staff-to-child ratio and in-house clinical teams, we’re proud to have won a reputation for excellence and market leading OFSTED ratings.

**Get out what you put in**

With experience working with young people with BESD or ASD in a school or care setting you will understand our young peoples developmental needs and what pastoral care entails. A good listener who can motivate and work in a team, you inspire young people to achieve. Flexibility and good organizational skills mean you’ll be an asset to the Witherslack Group.

**One of the best environments in SEND**

Lavender Lodge school resides within an 18th Century building in the heart of Mitcham. Our pupils come from many different boroughs to attend our school and are lucky to experience ‘a life changing love of learning.’ We are proud of our pupils and our dedicated team and pupils leave us with a sense of achievement. We were recently recognised as Good by Ofsted.

Skill set requirements
- Must have worked with pupils who are autistic and have previous experience of this
- Needs to be able to communicate in a variety of ways as 70% of our pupils are non-verbal e.g. can use Makaton, picture display symbols - we use PEC’s and PODD, have experience working with non -verbal pupils
- Have worked with pupils who display challenging behaviour but would have the will and desire to support pupils to manage their behaviour and also for you to work to understand the function of the behaviour
- Be flexible to work with pupils from 4 through to 11 years old
- Be able to think outside the box in regards to delivering lessons. We have lots of tools to help support this, but our pupils need a bespoke and accessible curriculum
- Have an awareness of autism strategies such as TEACCH, attention autism and use of PODD and be able to use these in practise

**What we do for you**

We know you’re going to do great things. For your hard work and commitment, we reward you with the best salary and benefits package in the education sector. With us, you’ll get to bring learning to life and make a genuine difference to the lives of our young people - plus you’ll get:

- **Training**: A full induction and on the job training
- **Holiday**: You’ll work hard at WG, so you’ll be rewarded with full school holidays/35 days holiday including bank holidays
- **Progression**: If career development is your thing, most of our head teachers and leaders have been promoted from within our group
- **Flexible benefits**: meaning you can increase/decrease benefits such as life insurance - check out our benefits here
- **Wellbeing**: a host of wellbeing tools and advice including employee assistance
- **Medical cover** so you can claim back the cost of things like an opticians or dentist appointment and a host of high-street discounts
- **Beautiful working environments** with the very best facilities - check out our schools here
- A recommend a friend scheme that offers a £2,000 bonus every time
- **Contributory pension scheme** - matched up to 5%

**Bring your whole-self to work**

Our young people come from all walks of life, diverse backgrounds and with different needs - and our workforce reflects that diversity, so that our teams can engage, encourage and inspire our young people to be themselves. You’ll be more than a Pastoral Assistant, you’ll be able to connect with our pupils because of:

- Previous experience with ASC, ADHD or SEMH pupils and with working with families in challenging circumstances and expertise to support and resolve difficulties
- Experience of multi-agency work with an understanding of legislation, policies and guidance around safeguarding and child protection
- Ideally - NVQ 3 in Care/Level 2 Teaching Assistant Qualification

**Interested in joining us?**

Our young people deserve the best possible future and we feel the same about our teams. You deserve to have the career you want, with a purpose-led employer, in an environment that allows you to be yourself.
- For a full job description and person specification, please see the attached document._