Practice Manager - Fostering

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Barnardo's Fostering North England is a leading national independent fostering agency, providing fostering and short break services across North England,

We aim to achieve high quality, stable placements for children and young people by ensuring that foster carers are appropriately recruited, assessed, trained and supported within the required regulations and national minimum standards.

Barnardo's Fostering North England are looking to recruit a Practice Manager to join our excellent team. This position is a fantastic opportunity for an ambitious experienced Social Work Practitioner to be involved in innovative practice, improving the outcomes and life chances for Children and Young People.

This is a full time, fixed term, maternity cover post . This post is primarily linked to our North England Fostering service with an expectation of occasional travel further afield.

You will work alongside another Practice Manager as part of a wider team of staff. You will be responsible for the recruitment, assessment and support of foster carers, who provide care to Children and Young People who are Looked After.

As practice manager you will work with Foster Carers and Young people, Multi-Agency Partners and Local Authority Children's Services in addition to range of internal and external contacts. It is crucial that you are an excellent communicator, responding to the needs of all parties.

You will also have relevant Fostering/ Looked After experience and be confident and ambitions in leading a team to deliver a child centred service.

Some of the essential criteria for the role include:

• Valid Social Work England Registration
• Comprehensive understanding of the legislation, National Standards and best practice
• Knowledge of external inspection processes
• Experience producing complex reports for relevant stakeholders
• Experience of supervising social work staff
• Full enhance DBS

Would you like to be involved in driving the growth and expansion of Barnardos North Fostering team. Please apply today and complete our application form online with the attached Person Specification for the role.

When completing your application please refer to your skills knowledge and experience in relation to the Person Specification and Job Description. This should be done with an understanding of the context of the service described.

Please note due to the high volume of applications for some posts, this advert might close before the displayed closing date. We recommend that you apply for this role as soon as possible.

Pay & Reward Framework

We know that our colleagues go above and beyond in delivering our vital work, driven by their passion and commitment to Barnardo's values . We also know that we can only realise our ambitions and achieve better outcomes for more children, thanks to the talent, hard work and creativity of our people.

For all these reasons, we are committed to a new approach to pay and reward, to ensure it is fair, attractive and progressive, which was rolled out in April 2023. This is a positive change for the charity, and a part of our People & Culture Strategy. It will assist us in supporting colleagues to belong, thrive and grow in their colleague journey at Barnardo's and in time will offer clear routes of progression for colleagues in both their career and their pay.

Whilst the full pay band and salary range is advertised, our approach to starting salaries is to appoint between the minimum to mid-point of the pay band - this ensures that pay steps are available to reward our colleagues annually based on their contribution to excellence and alignment to our values and behaviours. More details on Barnardo's pay framework can be found upon application.

Benefits

Workplace Offer: What it means for you

The world of work has changed. We are understanding of what works best for our colleagues both current and future as we look to embrace this new way of working. Our hybrid working initiative is based on trust, flexibility and empowerment. We understand our workplace offer means different things to different people, and we encourage those conversations. This may mean working at one of our stores, services, working at home, at one of our Collaboration Hubs or any combination of these.

• Barnardo's believe in creating equality of opportunity in the workplace and supporting people to manage their work-life balance; we are therefore open to offering flexible working arrangements.
• 26 days annual leave plus bank holidays, increasing after 5 years service
• The ability to buy up to another 5 days annual leave via our HolidayPlus scheme
• A host of family friendly leave options including company Maternity Paternity and Adoption pay; together with all family additional leave options
• Service related sick pay from day 1
• Access to a Group Personal Pension with a matched 4% or 6% contribution from Barnardo's. Ability to pay via salary sacrifice to garner both tax and NI savings on your own contribution
• Death in service cover of 4x annual earnings for all staff contributing to our Group Personal Pension
• Cycle2work scheme
• Interest free season ticket loans
• Discounts and cashback from at high street shops including major supermarkets, cinemas, gyms, leisure/theme parks, holidays and much more via our Benefit Portal
• 20% discount at Barnardo's stores
• Opportunity to purchase a health cash plan to claim towards dental, glasses, therapy etc
• Free access to round the clock employee assistance program for advice and support
• Access to Barnardo's Learning and Development offer

*T&C's apply based on contract

About Barnardo's

At Barnardo's we believe in children - no matter who they are, what they have done or what they have been through. Please read about following the link below. You will be asked questions relating to them as part of the recruitment process for this role.

Our commitment to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) is reflected in our values and our practice, and we have invested in this area of our work to ensure that we can deliver on our commitments to be an inclusive employer. EDI is a key enabler of our purpose as a charity and we want to ensure that the diversity of our teams is reflective of the communities we serve and that we continue to learn and develop our work with a focus on inclusion. We particularly encourage applications from candidates from Black, Asian and Minoritised Ethnic Communities, candidates who are LGBT+ and Disabled candidates.