Early Help Coordinator – AR

Carrington Blake Recruitment; Lewisham; On-site; GBP 30,000 - 50,000; Full time

Job description

Main Purpose of the job:

Partnership development: This role is critical in the development of relationships with partner agencies to ensure there is strong collaborative working to achieve positive outcomes with families. The post holder will play a key negotiating and mediation role as well as providing information, advice and support to partners.

Early Help Coordinators will provide training and scaffolding support to professionals across the partnership. This includes, but is not limited to, support with developing Family Advice Record & Plans (FARPs), previously known within Lewisham Family Thrive as the Early Help Assessment (EHA); facilitation of Team Around the Family (TAF) Meetings; facilitation of Team Around the School (TAS) Meetings; and bespoke training via the LSCP, among other mechanisms. Crucial to the role is negotiation and supporting agencies in their work with families, building on the existing positive relationships in a child and family’s life.

Key to the above is the tracking, monitoring and analysis of plans and data to facilitate improved practice across the partnership.

Front Door for Families: The role is also critical in relation to providing high quality information and advice and ensuring that referrers and families are signposted and supported to access the most appropriate service and support for them first time. Early Help Coordinators will also sit within the Front Door for Families, alongside Children’s Social Care and other partners to provide advice and guidance when referrals do not meet Safeguarding thresholds and liaising with partners to ensure early help is in place.

Integrated Neighbourhood Working: As a main focus of this role you will be part of a team that works to support the implementation of a new neighbourhood based service in Lewisham, including the development of a Family Hub approach. The neighbourhood offer will deliver the right support to families at the right time, joining up universal services, and targeted early help services including those delivered by LBL, commissioned by LBL and delivered by other agencies to improve outcomes for children and families.

Thrive Lewisham, Lewisham’s Prevention and Early Help Strategy: The Early Help Coordinator will support the delivery of Lewisham’s Prevention & Early Help Strategy: Thrive Lewisham, including supporting communities, partners and stakeholders in understanding the principles and objectives of the strategy and the i-Thrive framework.

Summary of Responsibilities and Personal Duties:

1. To ensure at all times that children and their families are at the heart of service provision and development across the partnerships.
2. To develop, facilitate and coordinate working relationships and partnerships with a range of front-line staff and managers across Lewisham’s Children and Young People’s Services and partner agencies including schools, health, police, housing, and the voluntary and community sector to enable families to receive timely help and support, and supporting professionals in their use of the Early Help Assessment.
3. To coordinate multi agency support across services to meet the needs of vulnerable children, young people and families by providing information, advice and guidance to professionals working with families who may need early help, by being both responsive: providing information, advice and guidance to professionals when they request it and proactive: where families are identified as likely to be in need of early help, making contact with professionals already working with that family – or who may know the family – to try and get help to them as quickly as possible.
4. Use negotiating and influencing skills to identify and enable different agencies to undertake ‘lead professional’ responsibilities, and providing advice, guidance and support to those professionals to undertake this responsibility.
5. This includes modelling the skills and attitudes that promote and foster children, young person and family centred working and the development of trust between practitioners.
6. To provide training, guidance and advice to individuals completing FARPs and to act as a quality assurance agent, as well as delivery of FARP training to a broad range of audiences.
7. To undertake reviews of FARPs to ensure that progress is occurring to plan and timescales.
8. Responsible for attending multi agency meetings, where required, to advise /guide and consult on the FARP and to support in the identification of services that can contribute to the plan.
9. Design and deliver training and support to local practitioners to work as a multi agency Team Around the Family (TAF).
10. To create and review guidance around TAF for practitioner use.
11. To be responsible for promoting the Family Information Service and encourage use to support children’s needs.
12. Ensure seamless links are maintained with targeted and specialist services to ensure swift access to those services where appropriate, ensuring that any child identified as being at risk of significant harm is referred to Children’s Social Care.
13. To deliver parenting programmes alongside the wider partnership where capacity permits.
14. To be responsible for promoting, championing and embedding the principles of the Signs of Safety practice framework.
15. To be responsible for promoting the Family Hubs offer and raise awareness across the professional partnership and amongst service users.

Front Door for Families:

1. To be part based within the Front Door for Families, alongside CSC, to provide advice and support to referrers ensuring that the right support is provided to families first time.
2. To lead on providing ‘Early Help’ information to the multi-agency safeguarding hub (MASH) to gather research from providers in Lewisham within the required timescales.
3. To promote services offered by agencies in Lewisham providing Early Help.
4. To act as the conduit between the MASH and Prevention and Early Help Services to ensure fluidity across the directorates and to ensure that families receive the right support at the right time.

Integrated Neighbourhood Working:

1. To be the lead contact for professionals within a locality seeking advice, guidance and support to ensure a co-ordinated response to families who are already in receipt of support from agencies, and who require an ‘Early Help’ response following a referral to the Front Door, or following a request from partners such as schools, health professionals and police.
2. To build and maintain good working relationships with partners and other service areas to ensure improved communication and collaboration between agencies in relation to the development of the Early Help Neighbourhood offer and to develop appropriate pathways to support and plans around a child and family to ensure a coherent whole system approach.
3. Supporting parents, partners and members of the public by signposting to appropriate services to contribute to good outcomes for children and prevent escalation of need.
4. To promote services and resources in the area and across the authority to support children and families.
5. To contribute to the development of any neighbourhood allocation panels or processes to ensure improved performance and outcomes for children and young people within the area.

Thrive Lewisham, Lewisham’s Prevention and Early Help Strategy:

1. To contribute to the development of the i-Thrive framework for Early Help in Lewisham, and the effective delivery of support to families.
2. To have a clear understanding of commissioned services and ensure that these are utilised appropriately to address the needs of families and identify gaps in provision that will inform the commissioning process and re-shape service delivery.
3. To ensure that case management, monitoring and statistical information regarding work is in place and ensure that progress of families is tracked efficiently, supporting partners to keep records as appropriate.
4. To analyse available data to provide impact and outcomes reports for children and identify any gaps in services to inform monitoring priority outcomes.
5. Develop communication channels and good working relationships with early help professionals in other local authorities, to support cross authority working.

General requirements:

1. Undertake other duties, commensurate with the grade, as may reasonably be required.
2. To carry out the duties of the post with due regard to the Council’s Equal Opportunities Policy and core values.
3. All employees are required to participate in the Performance Evaluation Scheme (PES) and to undertake appropriate training and development identified to enhance their work.
4. Assist in carrying out the Council’s environmental policy within the day to day activities of the post.
5. To contribute to the development of key documents including performance frameworks, briefings, reports, and business cases.
6. To work flexibly when required – including evening and weekend work as required -– to ensure that levels of service provision are achieved within agreed frameworks for flexible working set out in the service.

PERSON SPECIFICATION

Equality & Diversity
1) Awareness of and a commitment to Equality of Access and Opportunity in a diverse community.
2) Understanding of how equality and diversity relates to this post and the context of family support and early intervention.

Knowledge
3) Good working knowledge of current legislation and policy regarding safeguarding for children and families, and the legislative and national policy and guidance context for early help for children and families.
4) A sound working knowledge of Safeguarding and Early Help procedures, CSC thresholds and the Supporting Families agenda.
5) Knowledge of the FARP and Team Around the Child/Family process.
6) Knowledge of the Data Protection Act 1998 and information sharing issues.
7) Working knowledge of Microsoft Office, Outlook and case management systems.

Aptitude
8) Able to build and sustain positive relationships with a wide range of stakeholders, including children, young people, parents, carers, voluntary and statutory groups.
9) Ability to engage, empower, motivate and influence individuals and partner agencies.
10) Ability to work flexibly across teams and agencies and challenge existing working practices.
11) Able to produce concise and detailed reports.
12) Ability to chair multi-agency meetings.
13) Ability to deliver training to a range of audiences.
14) A positive attitude to change.
15) Ability to reflect on own practice and development.
16) Ability to problem solve.
17) Ability to work under pressure.
18) Ability to resolve conflict.

Skills
19) Strong interpersonal skills, with the ability to negotiate effectively and influence practice development.
20) Skills in using knowledge of legislation to support and improve practice of others.
21) Ability to analyse and interpret data and present results.
22) Excellent Communication skills both written and verbal.
23) Presentation/ training skills.
24) Excellent problem solving and decision making skills.
25) ICT skills including Excel, Word and PowerPoint.
26) Excellent time management skills and ability to work to deadlines, on own or with partners.

Experience
27) A sound career history and experience of working with families and children requiring early help support.
28) Experience of working in a multi-agency environment – developing and maintaining relationships across services and supporting them to work together to achieve coordinated responses to children’s needs.
29) Experience of working independently and setting own priorities.
30) Experience of assessing & analysing information about the needs of children and families.
31) Experience of effectively promoting equality and diversity.
32) Experience of working in a diverse community.
33) Experience of managing change within a multi-agency working environment, with front-line, middle management and/or senior management level.
34) Experience of delivering training.

General Education
35) A relevant professional qualification or NVQ Level 4 equivalent gained in setting associated with children or young people and families or substantial professional experience of working with children, young people vulnerable adults and their families.

If you are interested in this role please do reach out to me via email or telephone!

[e-mail]

020 753 766 07