| Salary £28,142 - £32,062 per annum | Permanent, Full Time, 37 hours per week | Preston, Chorley, South Ribble and West Lancashire|

International Sponsorship – this role is not open to international sponsorship.

ABOUT THE ROLE:

Lancashire County Council Children’s Services is a progressive and innovative place to come and work for embracing relationship based practice, strengths-based approaches and the Family Safeguarding model of practice.
The EmPower Contextual Safeguarding Team work with young people aged 13 to 18 years who are experiencing exploitation and/or harm outside of the home. Within this team, you will utilise a Contextual Safeguarding approach to understanding and responding to young people’s experiences of significant harm beyond their families. This approach recognises that the different relationships that children form in their neighbourhoods, schools and online can feature violence and abuse. Parents and carers often have little influence over these contexts of extra familial harm and this can undermine the parent child relationship. This post holder will work with a team of children’s services professionals and practitioners, to ensure the development, delivery and continuous improvement of specialist services for children, young people and their families and carers in Lancashire.
As a Missing from Home Worker you will undertake return home interviews with children who have returned home from being reported missing by their parents or carers. You would be supporting social workers within the team to undertake identified pieces of work, working directly with children and parents, to achieve change within families. The role requires you to record all sessions in an analytical way onto the children’s LCS records. Attendance at group supervision is necessary as this informs work to be completed and reflect on how to achieve best outcomes for the children.
The role may be required to work evenings, weekends and occasional public holidays, in order to meet service requirements in respect of service user needs.

CORE DUTIES

Responsibilities will include:-
The Missing from home worker completes return home interviews for any Lancashire child that has had a missing from home episode. The missing from home worker will be allocated new tasks on a daily basis. They are responsible for:

liaising with the allocated social worker or relevant professionals upon assignment of the task to gather pertinent information.

• Organising, undertaking and recording the return home interview within 72 hours.
• Completing an analysis of the information gathered and recording recommendations, ensuring information is shared with the allocated social worker, risk factors are highlighted and reflected in the child’s plan.
• Identifying vulnerabilities and risks that require referrals for further support
• Contributing to the multi-disciplinary supervisions and meetings where necessary, ensuring they provide an analysis of the work they have completed.
• Liaising with professionals and partner agencies to support the needs of the children young people and family and signposting and making referrals when necessary.

• Building up a knowledge and understanding of resources in the community, such as local groups, charities etc to allow for signposting to relevant services for children and young people who are not open to statutory services.

• This is not an exhaustive list of all tasks that may fall to the post-holder and employees will be expected to carry out such other reasonable duties which may be required from time to time.
  In return Lancashire County Council offers a range of benefits, which can be found on LCC Vacancies website.
  For an informal discussion, please contact Team Manager’s
  Sophie Eaves : Sophie.Eaves@Lancashire.gov.uk
  Lucy Riding : Lucy.Riding@Lancashire.gov.uk
  Samantha Cooke : Samantha.Cooke@Lancashire.gov.uk

PLEASE ENSURE YOU HAVE UPLOADED AND ATTACHED YOUR SUPPORTING STATEMENT TO EVIDENCE HOW YOU MEET THE CRITERIA FOR THE ROLE. THE PANEL MAY BE UNABLE TO SHORTLIST YOU FOR INTERVIEW WITHOUT THIS EVIDENCE.

The post you are applying for is covered by the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (as amended in 2013). If successful you will be required to apply to the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) for a ‘disclosure’. Further information can be found on the ’Our Recruitment Process’ tab.
You will be required to provide a car for use in connection with the duties of this post and must be insured for business use. However, we may consider you if you cannot drive because of a disability.
We reserve the right to close down a vacancy early, before the closing date, if we receive sufficient applications.
Interviews are expected to take place: 24-09-2025