Family Support Co-ordinator

Job Advert

**Part time Family Support Co-ordinator**

Pure Insight support young people leaving children’s homes and foster care (care leavers) between the age of 16 - 28. We provide a wraparound offer supporting young people to take control of their lives, feel connected and develop a sense of belonging in their community. Over the past 10 years we have grown across Greater Manchester delivering services in Stockport, Salford, Cheshire East, and Warrington, in the upcoming year we have plans to extend our services to other local authorities in the surrounding areas. We are really proud to have developed nationally recognised best practice programmes for young care leavers.

To support our continued growth, we have an exciting opportunity for Family Support Coordinator to join our Pure Insight Team.

Young Care leavers are some of the most vulnerable young people in our society; many leave school with few qualifications and a significant number are unemployed, living in inadequate housing, and experience poor health and levels of poverty. Nationally 25% of female care leavers become parents between 16 -18 years of age and 50% by the age of 24.

Adjusting to parenthood must happen simultaneously whilst they are still in the process of transitioning out of care or adapting to independent living. Coping with the stressful demands of learning to take care of themselves and a baby at such a young age, whilst often still struggling to make sense of unstable, often chaotic childhoods, can leave little space for engaging with services in the wider community. Instead, many care leavers struggle with poor self-esteem. Isolated and lonely, they may lack the confidence, social skills and social network to join new parenting groups in their community.

Additionally, time spent in the care system can make care leavers reluctant to ask for and accept support. Becoming a parent can be the most rewarding experience in the world, but all parents need support networks to thrive as a family.

The post of Parent Coordinator is an established role. The role is to take full responsibility for certain aspects of the projects work, as detailed below. All duties are to be carried out in line with current operating policies and procedures and any procedures of the partnership agency. In the first instance the post holder reports to the area manager

**Main Duties of the post**
- To develop trusting relationships with young parents (who are also young care leavers).
- Work alongside families to identify bespoke support plans that meet their needs and wishes,
- Review the progress and development of plans at the end of the agreed timeframe, record the outcome and identify further support needs where required.
- Include the Family Support Practitioner and volunteers in plans where appropriate, ensuring roles and expectations for all are clear and communication lines are established
- Support the team with volunteer recruitment, training, selection and matching via the existing mentoring programme, identifying volunteers passionate about supporting young families.
- Deliver volunteer supervision, evaluation and support, including some out of hours activity.
- To liaise with referral agencies and partners, build and maintain positive relationships to ensure the best possible outcomes for young families.
- Work in partnership with professionals in social care around the needs of parents on various plans including early interventions and child protection
- Provide advocacy in formal meetings such as child protection, team around the child and support parents to engage with statutory services in their lives.
- Support parents to access other support in the community.
- Deliver Pure Insight parent support groups via face to face and online, also explore peer support options locally - give and receive approach.
- To ensure that all live documents, monitoring data and case notes are completed and recorded electronically.
- To interpret monitoring data and produce and present evaluation reports, share good practice - the voice of children and parents is central to this.
- To provide information and advice to other project staff on specific areas of project activity that the post holder has responsibility for.
- To cover any appropriate aspect of other team members roles in their absence.
- To contribute to the development and promotion of Pure Insight.
- To be self-administrating.
- To contribute to meeting project or departmental targets and objectives.
- To take part in regular supervision with line manager.
- To participate in the general development of the organisation through meetings, training and attendance of other events.
- To carry out any other duties within the scope of the post.

**Person Specification**

**Essential**
- Resilience and ability to lone work.
- Self-motivating and self-administrating.
- Experience of coordinating a project.
- Experience of managing volunteers or a team.
- Experience of multiagency working around sa