About Us:

Help us transition Care Leavers to the next stage of their lives.

At the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, we put local people at the heart of decision-making, working in partnership with them to provide quality services that are responsive, effective and efficient. We are committed to meeting the needs of our diverse population by recruiting a skilled workforce from an equally diverse background ensuring that every member of our local population, is able to enjoy a great quality of life.  We have the resources to fulfil this ambition and with the right people in place, plus ongoing training and plenty of support, we know we can make a real difference to the well-being of our Care Leavers. Join one of our semi-independent homes as part of Family Services and you will have the chance to help our young people leaving care, who will have a range of needs and help build the resilience and life skills they need to succeed as they become adults.

The Role:

This is an exciting opportunity to join an energetic and enthusiastic team who are fully invested in the needs of our care leavers. You will work with a small number of young people living in semi-independent accommodation (residential and some in self-contained flats in Kensington), as they prepare to move to their own tenancy. You will be based at Creswick Road Semi Independent Unit, located in Ealing, which provides residential accommodation, for 6 young people of both sexes, aged17 ½+.   You will support our care leavers to develop the necessary life skills to eventually live independently.  As a Support Worker, during this vital stage of their lives, working collaboratively with Social Workers and Personal Advisers is important.  You will provide the support and guidance that parents usually offer to their children, enabling them to achieve their full potential, eg, in education, training, employment; getting appropriate support to manage their physical and emotional well-being/mental health, building and maintaining positive relationships and in the case of former unaccompanied minors helping them to access appropriate legal advice.  Alongside the rest of their support network, you will play a key role in supporting care leavers to make the best of the opportunities available.  Our teams’ ethos is preparing each young person for whatever the future holds and are sure you will find a great deal of job satisfaction in our innovative and forward-thinking team. 

Please refer to the Job Description for more information.

About You:

To make the most of this fascinating opportunity, you’ll combine plenty of empathy with a resilient and flexible approach. As you’ll be motivating care leavers from complex backgrounds, you will be both compassionate and calm, with the capacity to develop trust-based relationships. Crucially, you will enjoy working with this group and you will have the perseverance to never give up on them.  You should have a minimum of 2 years direct experience working with both children and young people; the NVQ Level 3 in Health & Social Care (or an equivalent qualification) plus the willingness to complete the Advanced Certificate in Systemic Practice in safeguarding.  You should have an awareness of legislation relating to ‘looked-after’ children and care leavers. You will have standard working hours (9-5 week-days), but when necessary will need to be to flexible to work outside of this. Excellent interpersonal and communication skills are vital to ensure you can inspire our young people and fully meet their needs.

Join our friendly, supportive, committed team and you can look forward to a package that includes a competitive salary, a high-quality pension scheme and generous annual leave, plus bank holidays.

Please apply online explaining how you meet the requirements set out in the person specification and job description. CV’s will not be considered for this role.

We reserve the right to close this vacancy early if we receive a high volume of suitable applicants

Additional information

We are committed to promoting equality and respecting diversity and welcome applications from all sections of the community.

We are a Disability Confident Employer – committed to ensuring that our recruitment and selection process is inclusive and accessible.

We engage our staff with a variety of learning types including face-to-face and virtual learning because we want to ensure our staff understand our values and behaviours, grow their skills and develop their careers.

This post is covered by the Fluency Duty, as outlined in the Code of Practice on the English language requirements for public sector workers.

We do not accept speculative CVs from any source.

Please note, we will primarily contact candidates by e-mail throughout the recruitment process, please monitor your email junk / spam folder as our system generated emails may be allocated to these folders by your email settings.

If you experience difficulties with the recruitment application process, please contact the recruitment team by email: recruitment@rbkc.gov.uk