Mockingbird Liaison Officer

**Contract Type**: Fixed term contract (until 31st March 2026)

**Contract Reason**: Specific project

**Salary**:Grade F. Scale 17 - £28,770 to Scale 22 - £31,364

**Base Location**:Ashton Old Library, Old Street, Ashton-under-Lyne, OL6 7SG

**Assessment Date**: 21st October 2024

**The Role**

The Mockingbird Family Model is an alternative, innovative method of delivering foster care with the potential to improve placement stability, safety and permanency for children and young people in care and to improve support for, and retention of Foster Carers.

The Model was developed by The Mockingbird Society in the USA and is based on the idea of an extended family.

It uses the concept of a ‘constellation’ which is where 6 to 10 “satellite” families of mainstream and kinship Foster Carers live close to a dedicated “hub home” of specially recruited and trained carers offering respite care, peer support, regular joint planning and social activities.

The hub home carer has a spare bedroom and offers regular planned and emergency respite to the satellite carers alongside facilitating peer support, regular joint planning, and social activities.

Relationships are central to the model, with hub and satellite Foster Carers providing frontline care and with social workers able to concentrate on successful relationship building.

This is an exciting opportunity for you to develop and support the carers who will be part of this model across the borough following the Mockingbird Family Model. You will be offering training to foster families within the constellation and working very closely with the team manager, the carers’ supervising social workers and hub home carer to implement and develop the Mockingbird Family model in Tameside.

Alongside this model, we would like to replicate the principles of supporting our fostering households by creating other supporting models that will aim at increasing the resilience and placement stability for many other children.

**About You**
- Ability to make sound judgements under pressure and remain calm in difficult situations, dealing and managing with conflict
- Strong commitment to equality and diversity in the operation and delivery of public services.
- Ability to manage own work and time to meet required timescales
- Experience of working relationally to build consistent and trusted relationships with families and engage with children, young people leading to positive change

**About Us**

At Tameside, we are committed to ensuring all our Citizens lead long, fulfilling and healthy lives. We are committed to supporting economic growth, providing high quality health and care services, protecting our most vulnerable and creating strong and supportive, self-sufficient communities.

We recognise that our people drive our success and enable the organisation to deliver on its vision, purpose and priorities, and that our people are our most important resource and asset. Our values underpin our practice and behaviours, and are at the heart of everything that we do; and we understand that how we do things is just as important as what we do. We pride ourselves on living by our STRIVE values of Support, Trust, Respect, Integrity, Value Diversity and Engage. Our values underpin our practice and behaviours and are at the heart of everything that we do. How we do things are just as important as what we do.

Our employees’ skills, experience and knowledge are essential to our success along with their happiness, wellbeing, commitment, enthusiasm and motivation to be the best they can be.

Our rewards and benefits package can be viewed here

We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people and adults and expects all staff to share this commitment.

We are committed to developing a culture which respects individuals, appreciates difference and allows everyone regardless of background to reach their full potential. We are proud to be an accredited disability confident employer. Reasonable Adjustments will be considered in accordance with the Equality Act 2010 in relation to the Job Role Criteria.

**Reference Number: DPT327