Location: Lincoln Office - Hybrid - with regular travel to support foster carers in the Lincoln area and north of the county)
Contract/Hours: Permanent - Full Time - 37 hours per week.
Benefits: 25 days annual leave PLUS bank holidays, rising to 30 days with service, excellent training and development opportunities, employer contribution pension, discount portal with your favourite brands and Blue Light card eligibility.
Who is Skylark Fostering?
Tim Clayton and Trish Kelly bring nearly 60 years of social work experience to Skylark Fostering, supported by a robust professional partnership and deep expertise. Their mutual trust and effective collaboration will be the foundation of Skylark's leadership. Driven by a passion for transforming the lives of vulnerable children, they will strive to guide Skylark with wisdom and compassion.
Their extensive experience covers child protection, foster care management, innovative practice implementation, recruitment, foster carer assessment, and quality assurance. They have strategically enhanced foster care services through thoughtful service improvements and innovations. Their leadership is marked by clear communication and the ability to motivate teams towards shared objectives, ensuring successful service development initiatives.
Why Skylark Fostering?
Our sincere ambition is to establish the most innovative, ambitious, and genuinely aspirational fostering agency in the UK. We will achieve this by actively listening to our foster carers and fostered children and through this partnership, develop services and supports that align with their priorities, and to be an agency that truly works for them.
Our goal is for all fostered children and young people to feel a sense of belonging, safety, and to be on a path toward a happy and fulfilling life. We will ensure they experience a loving and happy family environment, receive the best educational support, and importantly are guided along a clear career pathway.
A bit about the role
This is a rare opportunity to be involved right at the start. Whilst your role will be primarily to support foster children and foster families, you'll be able to learn about all the aspects (and challenges!) that come with establishing an 'outstanding' Independent Fostering Agency. Not only will this provide invaluable carer enhancing experience, but there will also be every opportunity to develop a senior role in the agency should you choose to do so.
So, if you believe you are an outstanding Fostering Social Worker and feel this is the challenge for you, please get in touch.
Key tasks:
- Contributing to the recruitment and selection of new foster families to the Agency
- Providing professional supervision and developmental support, including advice and guidance to fostering families and working with other professionals where appropriate.
- Supporting fostering families to look after children and young people who have experienced trauma.
- Undertake fostering reviews, providing high quality, analytical reports and presenting to Panel where appropriate.
- Ensure all regulatory body requirements are met.
- Enthusiasm for learning and development.
- Contributing to an out of hours foster service (this will be done on a rota basis).
Let's talk about you...
- Are you resilient and have a positive approach to change and challenge? We are looking for someone with a 'can do' attitude to join our team.
- A Social Work qualification is essential and Social Work England Registered
- The ability to prioritise and manage your work to deadlines complying with regulatory requirements.
- Ability and willingness to contribute new ideas about how we achieve best practice and best outcomes
- Have a genuine enjoyment about working directly with children, young people, and their carers; both individually and in groups
- Strong ethos of keeping the child at the centre of allwe do.
- Be able to use IT effectively including participating in virtual meetings and webinars.
- Experience of working in fostering.
- Access to a suitable means of transport to undertake the duties of the role, travelling across the area is essential.
Diversity, equality and inclusion
Skylark Fostering is an equal-opportunity employer that is committed to diversity and inclusion in the workplace. As we continue to grow, we know that we must have the most talented employees with diverse backgrounds, cultures, perspectives, and experiences to support our children and young people.
You may register your interest with your CV, but an application form must be submitted pior to interview if invited to formally apply.
Skylark Fostering is an equal opportunities employer. The successful applicant will be subject to a DBS check at enhanced level if successful for the position, employment checks and social media check.