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**How you'll make a difference**:
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The Families Together model is all about strengthening our support to families where there is a risk of a young person coming into care.

As a Families Together Support Worker you will make a difference by working with young people and their families to make and maintain changes in their lives to prevent them coming into care unnecessarily.

You will be skilled at engaging families quickly, creating purposeful, professional relationships and agreeing realistic aims and objectives. By building on their existing strengths to get through difficult experiences, your support will help families to continue to use what they have learned once the Families Together involvement ends.

This new team will provide outcome-focused support and interventions for young people and their families who have been identified as being at risk of entering care without additional support. The key purpose of the team will be to provide flexible, intensive and specialist support alongside_ _social workers and other key workers to:

- Prevent children coming into care unnecessarily.
- Support them to go home quickly if they do come into care at short notice.
- Contribute to reconciliation work with families particularly for those who could return home.

**What will you be doing?**
- You will work alongside colleagues in Integrated Children’s services, under the guidance of a Practice Manager, to provide help and support to young people and families where there is a risk of the young person coming in to care.
- You will enhance the current offer of support to vulnerable young people and families with a swift and dedicated response, including access to specialist support to address specific needs, with the aim of preventing long term family breakdown.
- You will manage your own caseload of specific work to ensure specialist input and effective outcomes are achieved, with the aim of keeping young people living at home wherever possible and safe to do so.
- You will ensure that records and reports are maintained and completed in accordance with professional and council guidelines.
- You will liaise and work with contacts from different sectors; including schools, health, social care and voluntary sector ensuring that communication is effective so that knowledge and best practice is shared.
- You will be visiting families and young people across South Gloucestershire.

**What we need from you**:
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- You will be qualified at NVQ 3 or equivalent in a relevant discipline or working towards an appropriate qualification related to the provision of services to children and young people.
- You will have relevant experience of the use of evidence-based practice working with vulnerable and disadvantaged children, families, or young people. You may also have first-hand experience of having provided support to young people who are at risk of entering the care system.
- You will have experience of writing holistic, multi-agency assessments and plans with families.
- You will be able to demonstrate knowledge of relevant legislation, regulations, codes of practice, processes and procedures relating to children and young people’s services.
- You will have a clear understanding of the national issues relating to children, young people and families and an understanding of successful strategies to improve outcomes for vulnerable children, young people and families.
- You will have well-developed interpersonal and communication skills to build relationships and engage successfully with colleagues, young people and their families and partner organisations.
- You will hold a valid driving license.

Please note that due to the nature of this role it is a requirement of employment that an enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check is obtained for this post.

You will be required, on occasion to work flexibly and outside normal working hours such as evenings or weekend, this is to ensure the team is responsive to the needs of the families we are supporting.

**How a career at South Gloucestershire Council is different**:
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- We value our staff as individuals, investing in their careers and we are recognised for the quality, breadth and depth of our
- **training and development **offer, which helps make the greatest long-term difference in work.- What’s special here is the strength of the
- **team ethos**. We are a relatively small local authority, so managers know staff well. They can plan their services to ensure teams have
- **manageable caseloads** and have effective supervision so
- **feel supported** to make decisions which are right for the children and young people they work with.Our teams at South Gloucestershire Council are making a real difference to the lives of people who live, work and learn here.- We're building and shaping communities which people are proud of
- We're working with the most vulnerable in our community to help them achieve what they want in life
- We're investing in our schools