CARE Exploitation Practitioner

CARE Exploitation Practitioner

Annual: £26,329.00

Region: East of England

Location: Essex - The Children's Society East of England

Directorate: Children & Young People

Vacancy type: Fixed-term contract

Closing date: 13 December 2020

Fixed Term Contract Covering Maternity Leave until 12/06/2021

Based in Chelmsford, covering Essex 

The Children’s Society has been helping children and young people in this country for over 130 years. We run local services that support children when they are at their most vulnerable and in desperate need of help. We’re there for children, every step of the way. 

This role sits within our children and families directorate, which works to provide immediate one-to-one and group support for children who urgently need support. Your role will be to help us maintain and develop innovative practice to support our work in our services within the Essex area. 

This role will be part of the CARE (Children at Risk of Exploitation) Service which is a multi-agency team led by The Children’s Society. You will be a qualified social worker or working towards a relevant qualification e.g. Diploma/Degree in Counselling, Professional Youth Worker or have extensive demonstrable experience in a similar sector.

You will have substantial experience of working with vulnerable young people within the community in an outreach/peripatetic approach.

The CARE team will work in partnership with the Lottery, the Office of the Police, Fire & Crime Commissioner, Essex County Council and Barnardo’s who will deliver the family support provision.

You will provide direct therapeutic support to vulnerable young people, vulnerable adults and families who are affected by exploitation. Support offered will include one to one, targeted group work & online support across the County.

You may also facilitate training around exploitation for statutory and voluntary agencies across the County.

The young people will require a skilled practitioner who is experienced in working with hard to reach, vulnerable young people at risk using socio-educative and trauma informed therapeutic approaches.

You will have experience of facilitating groups with knowledge of the issues and legislation affecting young people who are at risk of/or who have been exploited.

You will be emotionally resilient, knowing how to manage boundaries and work under pressure.

You will need to be a highly effective communicator, able to negotiate, professionally challenge and promote the needs of young people as well as manage a demanding workload.

You will act as a conduit between statutory and voluntary agencies/organisations ensuring that there are clear pathways and information sharing processes in place to protect young people, vulnerable adults and families.

Key Accountabilities

• To provide and develop work with young people at risk of exploitation in accordance with current legislation and good practice guidelines. You will attend MACE meetings and contribute to the County’s response to young people that are being exploited, supporting ESCB, Social Care & Police Operations as required.

• To build positive relationships with groups of young people who may be vulnerable to exploitation to raise awareness about exploitation and the associated risks and impact.

• To work in partnership with families and carers, Essex Police, YOS gangs prevention service, Family hubs, early intervention provision, Children’s Social Care and Adult Social Care, ESCB, ECVYS, education and other relevant voluntary and statutory agencies to ensure the project’s development both locally and nationally, through regular communication and positive working relationships. 
• To contribute to a multi-agency approach to enable effective interventions with young people, including delivering training to a range of professionals.

You will join a vibrant and supportive team to undertake this challenging and rewarding work and will have the chance to make a real difference to children and young people’s lives.

The Children’s Society runs over 100 local services that help thousands of young people who desperately need our support, and we campaign to get laws and policies changed to make children’s lives happier and safer. 

Every day we’re changing the lives of children in this country for the better – and with your help, tomorrow we can be there for even more. 

The Children’s Society is committed to safeguarding and protecting the children and young people that we work with.  As such, all posts are subject to a safer recruitment process, including the disclosure of criminal records and vetting checks.  We ensure that we have a range of policies and procedures in place which promote safeguarding and safer working practices across our services.

Therefore, candidates applying for work in our CYP Directorate will be required to complete an “Employment history_template” document prior to interview. The fully completed document should be loaded by the candidate at the point of uploading your CV.

The closing date for applications is midnight on 13th December 2020.

Interviews will be held on 21st, 22nd & 23rd December 2020.

At The Children’s Society we will be assessing your application against our behavioural framework, see attached document. The framework is split into 3 levels: senior manager, manager and individual and you will be assessed against the level that is relevant to the role you are applying for. The framework is our organisation’s basis for how we expect everybody to work together, how we treat each other and how we carry out our work. In your application and interview you will need to consider the behaviours and give us relevant examples where you have demonstrated these from your previous experience.