Outreach Worker

Opus People Solutions on behalf of Shropshire Council have an exciting opportunity for 3 Outreach Workers to join their team.
It is 37 hours and they have an office just outside of Shrewsbury, so it will be a mix of office, families' homes, and some working from home.

In this role

You will work within Shropshire's People's Directorate, with children, adults, and families. The role will involve working with children on the edge of care, children in care, and supporting children and young people to remain in, or return to, the care of parents and family where it is safe and in their interests to do so through support to the adult.

As an Outreach Worker, you will assist the delivery of intensive family support to children and young people and their families where:

1. There is a risk of family breakdown (Edge of Care). An Assessment of Needs identifies support to the child/young person and/or family which may prevent an unnecessary reception into Local Authority care.
2. There is a need to offer a young person additional support to make a successful move into independent living from a care arrangement.
3. To help a young person step down from foster care or residential placement back to the family home.
4. To support a parent with changes they need to make to enable a child/young person to return home.

Who will your manager be and what will you be responsible for?

You will be:

• Reporting to the Team Manager who is in turn responsible for your health and safety, training, and development.
• Expected to lead and/or contribute to a range of projects and build relations with both internal and external partners in order to achieve specified outcomes but will not have direct authority over those involved.
• Responsible for completing within expected timescales all mandatory corporate and role-specific training. Training requirements will be detailed in your corporate induction and Personal Development Plan (PDP). Courses are accessed via the council Learning Management System via the Intranet.

1. Enable young people to reach their full potential within their family setting wherever possible using a range of experience, skills, therapeutic interventions, and assessment tools.
2. Provide one-to-one direct work with young people, adults, and/or their families to develop strengths and resilience, including those at risk of substance misuse, self-harm/suicide prevention, anti-social/offending behaviour, and those with additional needs.
3. Support young people to engage with and achieve their full potential within education and employment.
4. Support parents and carers with behaviour management, through the "Understanding Your Teen/Child parenting programme" and Restorative Approach.
5. Provide Advocacy and Mediation approaches on behalf of the young person and parents and use of other restorative approaches.
6. Attend and contribute to a range of professional and family meetings including education and health appointments.
7. Be responsive to planned or unplanned interventions with children, young people, adults, and their families.
8. Deliver a systemic, family-focused approach and support parents through information and signposting to enhance their parenting capacity and meet their own needs.
9. Participate in an on-call rota.
10. In some instances, the post holder may provide back-up shifts to residential care homes as required and agreed with the individual either within their working week or as additional hours.
11. Maintain timely and accurate records of all interventions.

The above duties are an illustrative outline and are not an exhaustive list. You will be expected to become involved in a range of work to enable the service to respond effectively to the changing requirements of the Council and changes affecting the workforce.

What we expect of you

You will:

• Adopt a customer-focused approach when delivering your service, ensuring engagement with service users and maintenance of an appropriate personal profile.
• Act as an advocate for your service and work collaboratively with colleagues across the whole Council to meet the needs of the people of Shropshire.
• Meet individual, service, and personal development targets agreed through the Personal Development Review Process, learn from experience, and are committed to continuous improvement individually and as an employee of the Council.
• Work with colleagues to meet your team's key performance indicators, support a culture of team working, and ensure the team functions successfully in support of the Council's corporate and service objectives.
• Meet the behaviours and competencies adopted by the Council in the way in which they achieve their objectives and carry out their work.

If you thrive on making a difference and feel this is the role for you, then we'd love to hear from you.