Sanctuary Personnel, a leading and award winning recruitment agency is currently looking for an experienced and dedicated Band 7 Social Work Family Court Advisor to work full-time based in Exeter, within the Private Law Team.
The salary for this permanent Family Court Advisor job is £38,974 - £43,459 per annum.
This role is office based. The expectation will be that the post holder may be required to work flexibly around the service area, or to be routinely office based dependent upon specific responsibilities and duties.
Duties:
- Provide advanced social work-level services to children, families and courts by assessing and analysing court applications for any child protection and serious welfare issues affecting a child or young person
- Influence those with parental responsibility to be more child-focused when needed, to advise the courts and Local Authorities about safeguarding concerns and about how a child's life can be improved, supporting judicial case management in the process
- Keep the child at the centre of your work through high quality direct work with children and their families as well as high quality analysis and assessment
- Keep the child's timescale in the context of the child's journey through childhood and, where applicable, the care system, at the centre of everything you do and you must be prepared to advocate in the best interests of the child, ensuring their voice is not lost in the court arena
- Provide high quality early safeguarding and child protection advice, assessments and analysis to the Court on the needs and best interests of children subject to or involved in Family Proceedings
- Ensure that the well-being and safety of the child is paramount throughout Cafcass' involvement in the case
- Ensure that all incidents or risks of significant harm to the child are dealt with in accordance with the relevant Local Safeguarding Children's Board (LSCB) procedures and Cafcass policies and procedures
- Directly work with, or on behalf of children & families to achieve safe and positive outcomes for children, referring to other services where this will produce benefit
- Produce high quality work with a rapid throughput, combining increasing productivity with quality of casework
- Be fully engaged with Cafcass policy that all cases must be allocated and to adopt a proportionate approach to work, assessing the needs of the case
- Carry out an advanced social work level case analysis of the child's circumstances and to ensure this is updated if circumstances change, and for roles in Cafcass Intake to provide advice to local teams based on initial case analysis
- Provide advanced social work level advice and assist the Court to achieve a timely conclusion to proceedings and the best possible outcome for the child
- Administer and comply with orders made by the Family Court as required and conduct the necessary enquires in accordance with relevant legislation and Court Rules
- Provide a clear child-focused plan of work in each case which is monitored and subject to ongoing review
- Ensure the appointment and instruction of legal representation for the child as required, and work in partnership with the relevant agencies for each case
- Keep up to date with changes in legislation, Court Rules, policies, national directives, procedures and best practice developments
- Participate in training and development programmes in line with the agreed individual personal development plans, taking responsibility for your continued professional development, learning and improvement, through ever greater self-regulation supported by active and positive supervision in line with the Cafcass Supervision Policy
- Work in a child-inclusive way at all times, emphasising the voice of the child to the court and all parties to a case
- Work in partnership with other parties, agencies and significant others for the child, putting the needs of the child first in all discussions and negotiations
- Exercising statutory authority to safeguard the best interests of children
- A high standard of assessment and case analysis
- Effective communication and joint working with a range of professionals and agencies
- Assessing different levels of needs and risk including child protection
- Integrate diversity into practice
- Direct Engagement with Children & Families
- Use of direct work techniques with children and adults
Requirements of the Family Court Advisor:
- Diploma in Social Work (or Social Work England recognised equivalent)
- Current Social Work England registration
- Post qualifying experience in social work with children and families at risk
- Be a skilled negotiator, working persuasively with family members and professionals on behalf of children
- Be a resilient, reflective and accountable practitioner, possessing good IT and organisational skills, so that you can maintain a high throughput of outstanding casework
- Ability to produce written work to a high standard
- Communicates effectively and demonstrates empathy with children & families within the family justice system
- Negotiation Skills
- Ability to work autonomously
- Ability to work to deadlines
- Ability to prioritise
- Confident decision making to work in high conflict situations
- Ability to achieve safe outcomes in areas of conflict
- Knowledge and use of tools and models of risk assessment
- Ability to assess risk based on information available and to achieve defensible decision making to safeguard children
- Ability to gather, record and analyse complex information including court applications
- High quality concise recording and reporting skills
- Effective casework planning to timescales
- Ability to respond to differing case requirements including the needs of children and adults
- Ability to engage children and adults from diverse backgrounds
- Effective communication skills during engagement with families and others, focussing on the outcome for the child
Benefits:
Superannuation: The pension scheme used by Cafcass is the West Yorkshire Pension Fund (a Local Government Pension Scheme). This is also our auto enrolment scheme. Contribution rates are based on a tiered system.
Annual Leave: 28 days rising to 33 days after 5 years reckonable service, inclusive of 3 privilege days to be taken between Christmas and New Year plus any of the bank/public holidays.
Contact:
This Family Court Advisor job is advertised by Jenifer Watts; if you are interested in this position please click above to apply now.
Due to the high volume of applications we receive, regretfully we are only able to respond to candidates who meet our clients' requirements.
As a pioneer of diverse recruitment, Sanctuary Personnel is proud to encourage applicants from diverse backgrounds as our pool of candidates is very much reflective of the clients that candidates will support within their role. This very much played a significant in previously winning ‘Best Candidate Care’ at the Recruiter Awards as well being a two-time finalist for the same award.
Sanctuary takes great pride in building candidate and client relationships that promote Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI).
With recruitment consultants and all other employees undertaking annual online training on EDI and many other compliance training courses, Sanctuary is best-placed to undertake a fair and thorough selection process.
Reasonable Adjustments:
If you consider yourself to have a disability or require any reasonable adjustment during the recruitment process or within the workplace, please highlight this at the earliest opportunity. With this information, we will provide appropriate support to you throughout the process and into your work placement.
Reasonable Adjustments:
If you consider yourself to have a disability or require any reasonable adjustment during the recruitment process or within the workplace, please highlight this at the earliest opportunity. With this information, we will provide appropriate support to you throughout the process and into your work placement.
