Recruitment Support Officer / Admin - Fostering

at  Cleantech People

QUALIFICATIONS:

• A professional qualification relevant to social work e.g. health and social care, education youth work, childcare etc. desirable.
• Able to drive and have access to a vehicle.

EXPERIENCE:

• Experience of working within a customer focussed environment.
• Experience of working with children and families desirable.
• Experience and/or knowledge of Fostering Services and children looked after desirable.
• Experience of coordinating events desirable.

SKILLS & ABILITIES:

• Clear and accurate written and spoken communication skills.
• Good organisational skills and the ability to maintain accurate records and monitor performance information.
• Ability to work collaboratively with others.
• An ability and confidence to communicate with a broad range of people. Ensuring customers’ needs are met by responding to them efficiently and effectively.
• Flexible, can switch tasks/roles/priorities to deal with new demands, changes or new information.
• Strong IT skills including Microsoft packages or equivalent (e.g. G Suite).
• An ability to understand and empathise with the challenges faced by children in need of foster care and the potential foster carers.
• Able to drive and have access to a vehicle.
  Unless the DBS requirement stated above is for a Basic Disclosure, your DBS must be either through us or be accompanied by a subscription to the DBS updating service.
  SC Please note that clients invariably ask us to strip out contact details from CVs before we submit them for consideration. This is always quicker and easier to do if you send your CV to us in Word format, rather than as a PDF pleas

ENHANCED DBS DISCLOSURE IS LISTED AS A REQUIREMENT FOR THIS ROLE

As the Fostering Recruitment Support Officer, using your knowledge of children and the local area, you will reassure and share real stories of children in care (especially if you’ve already worked within social services, been a foster carer, care experienced or been part of a fostering family) and explain things concisely in an easy-to-understand way, without jargon. A warm friendly welcome can make all the difference, to people who might be talking themselves out of fostering. Your support, a friendly face and a chat could be the difference in finding more foster carers for children in Cardiff. As the first point of contact for the Foster Wales Cardiff team, you can guide people on their journey to be great foster carers. The principal purpose of this role is to improve the ability of local authority fostering services to recruit and retain foster carers.

Key Responsibilities:

• Support Foster Wales Cardiff in the delivery of best practice for foster care enquiries in the local authority.
• Manage all fostering recruitment enquiries and be the dedicated point of contact for potential foster carers including processing new enquiries, completion of home visits and initial visits prior to full assessment.
• Raise awareness of fostering locally including coordinating and attending local recruitment events and activities.
• Support the function of the fostering team in following guidelines to process and prepare fostering applicants in a timely and professional manner.
• Effectively managing information regarding fostering enquiries and applications.
• Support the retention of mainstream foster carers.
• Handle all enquiries in relation to fostering recruitment across the local authority.
• Manage Fostering enquiries in a productive manner within agreed timescales, processes and quality standards.
• Complete recruitment calls, recruitment visits and initial pre assessment viability visits with fostering applicants.
• Produce written reports at the pre- assessment viability stage and to make recommendations as to the viability of applicants to the identified social work practitioner.
• Support applicants and manage expectations in regard to service standards relative to the enquiry. Facilitate all stage 1 checks with applicants, including DBS, medical and references.
• Maintain and keep up to date all case records, spreadsheets and systems for recording information in relation to fostering enquiries and assessments.