Fostering Manager

An excitingopportunity has become available for a Fostering Practice Manager to work within Barnardo's Cymru Fostering Service. The Fostering Practice Manager post will be responsible for a Pan-Wales Service, with hybrid working you will have the flexibility to organise work prioritieswith work/life balance as we pride ourselves on providing all workers with a friendly, safe, and supportive environment to work in. It is important to highlight that although this is a Pan-Wales service there will be no expectation on the candidateto travel on a weekly basis.

The Fostering Practice Manager will work collaboratively with other professionals and foster parents across Wales to ensure we are meeting the sufficiency needs of local authorities, whilst providing a high-quality service to all our foster parents.

To be successful in the role you will require strong leadership skills and relevant experience of working with foster parents, children and young people. You will oversee the day to day operations of the service from supporting a team of supervising social workers to ensuring effective service delivery from the point of initial contact through to assessment and placements of children/young people. You will be able to demonstrate that you can think creatively in delivering high quality supportto foster parents andhave a significant level of knowledge and experience within the fostering sector. This role will include work allocation, performance monitoring, dealing with staffing issues and the training/development of the team and foster parents. The right candidate will have responsibility for the team development plan to meet objectives and ensure performance targets are achieved in terms of the recruitment/approvals of foster parents, and the placements of children and young people. It will be important for the candidate to have an innovative approach to ensure growth is achieved across the service.

It will be important that you have the desire to want to make a personal contribution to improving our service. The role requires someone with passion and drive to improve the outcomes and lived experience of our children and to ensure the right support for our staff/foster parents. You will need to demonstrate significant post-qualifying experience of fosteringsocial care practice, experience of working with children, young people, and foster parents, be familiar with child protection systems and processes and working with children who are looked after. You should also be able to demonstrate the ability to manage a team and ensure high standards of performance are practiced and maintained. You must have a Social Worker qualification and be registered with Social Care Wales, and the ability to travel across Wales when required is essential. As part of our Active Offer we would encourage applications from Welsh speakers.

When completing your application please refer to your skills knowledge and experience in relation to the Person Specification and Job Description. This should be donewith an understanding of the context of the service described.

Please note due to the high volume of applications for some posts, this advert might close before the displayed closing date. We recommend that you apply for this role as soon as possible.

We know that our colleagues go above and beyond in delivering our vital work, driven by their passion and commitment to Barnardo's?values. We also know that we can only realise our ambitions and achieve better outcomes for more children, thanks to the talent, hard work and creativity of our people.

For all these reasons, we are committed to a new approach to pay and reward, to ensure it is fair, attractive and progressive, which was rolled out in April 2023. This is a positive change for the charity, and a part of our?People & Culture?Strategy. It will assist us in supporting colleagues to belong, thrive and grow in their colleague journey at Barnardo's and in time will offer clear routes of progression for colleagues in both their career and their pay.

Whilst the full pay band and salary range is advertised, our approach to starting salaries is to appoint between the minimum to mid-point of the pay band this ensures that pay steps are available to reward our colleagues annually based on their contribution to excellence and alignment to our values and behaviours. More details on Barnardo's pay framework can be found upon application.

Workplace Offer: What it means for you

The world of work has changed. We are understanding of what works best for our colleagues both current and future as we look to embrace this new way of working. Our hybrid working initiative is based on trust, flexibility and empowerment. We understand our workplace offer means different things to different people, and we encourage those conversations. This may mean working at one of our stores, services, working at home, at one of our Collaboration Hubs or any combination of these.

• Barnardo's believe in creating equality of opportunity in the workplace and supporting people to manage their work-life balance; we are therefore open to offering flexible working arrangements.
• 26 days annual leave plus bank holidays, increasing after 5 years service
• The ability to buy up to another 5 days annual leave via our HolidayPlus scheme
• A host of family friendly leave options including company Maternity Paternity and Adoption pay; together with all family additional leave options
• Service related sick pay from day 1
• Access to a Group Personal Pension with a matched 4% or 6% contribution from Barnardo's. Ability to pay via salary sacrifice to garner both tax and NI savings on your own contribution
• Death in service cover of 4x annual earnings for all staff contributing to our Group Personal Pension
• Cycle2work scheme
• Interest free season ticket loans
• Discounts and cashback from at high street shops including major supermarkets, cinemas, gyms, leisure/theme parks, holidays and much more via our Benefit Portal
• 20% discount at Barnardo's stores
• Opportunity to purchase a health cash plan to claim towards dental, glasses, therapy etc
• Free access to round the clock employee assistance program for advice and support
• Access to Barnardo's Learning and Development offer

*T&C's apply based on contract

We are committed to being an inclusive employer and cultivating a culture where everyone can belong and thrive through inclusion and connectivity. We want our workforce to be reflective of the communities we work with, and for equality, diversity and inclusion to be embedded in everything we do. We are a Disability Confident Leader, are progressing our ambition to be an anti-racist organisation with Anti-Racism Commitments and actions in place and have networks for colleagues who are disabled, LGBT+, Black and Minoritised Ethnic and Women. We particularly encourage applications from Black and Minoritised Ethnic and/or disabled candidates who are currently underrepresented in our workforce. For disabled applicants, we offer reasonable adjustments throughout the recruitment process.

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