Temporary Placement Officer – Children’s Services

Reference no: Havering RQ786642

Pay rate: £14.90 per hour PAYE

Enhanced DBS required for this role

Car driver with valid license, insurance and vehicle

To assist in the day to day provision of a commissioning service for looked after children and children in need maintaining high professional standards at all times. To locate and co-ordinate placement making and packages of care identifying and assessing, both for service quality and value for money, a range of placement provision and maintain relevant resource data base.

Key responsibilities:

• Commission care packages for children and young people in care, leaving care or in need.
• Commission, where appropriate, approved packages of care with providers, and ensure timely, safe and smooth transfer of those clients.
• Commission Respite and Long Term Residential/IFA Placements for clients and ensure timely, safe and smooth transfer of those clients.
• Work with the SEND and general transitions agendas to ensure there is an understanding of the demands and needs from both children’s and adults services perspectives
• Build market intelligence and document it so that there is an understanding of reasonable rates and quality of provision for others to access as well as building own knowledge.
• Work closely with the Placements team to ensure placements are recorded on all appropriate systems including establishment and monitoring of finance records aligned with appropriate IT systems.
• Work closely with the Quality service where issues arise in relation to the quality of provision.
• Build/ maintain a tangible and accessible record of services, people placed in them with data, such as, date of placements, reviews and costs.
• Support the identification of placements where outcomes are not being progressed and to work closely with operational colleagues to challenge provision that is not as supportive or independence building as it could be.
• Be aware of voids in locations and to link them to appropriate placements so that capacity is used as effectively as possible.

“Role Requirements” – to give yourself the maximum chance of success please try and ensure your CV addresses the following essential criteria:

Experience & Knowledge:

• Brokerage/commissioning experience in children’s social services or similar setting.
• Experience of working in a team.
• Experience of developing a provider market and dealing with external providers for the provision of care services.
• Experience of dealing sensitively with issues that can reach across many stakeholders, including providers, families and operational services.
• Knowledge of child protection and ‘looked after’ children procedures & legal framework, and a good understanding of the Children Act and associated guidance.
• Knowledge, understanding and commitment to quality standards.
• Knowledge of ‘what works’ in residential and fostering placements for looked after children.

Skills:

• Good organisational and communication skills, written verbal and listening.
• Excellent negotiation skills.
• Ability to match placements with assessed need.
• Ability to advise senior managers and social workers on suitability of placements or packages of care.
• Ability to utilise supervision and attend training.
• Ability to contribute to the service development and maintain high professional standards.
• Hold a current driving license and have a car available for work.
• Minimum of 12 months recent experience in a similar role, or context and ideally within a public sector organisation.
• Strong IT skills using Microsoft packages or equivalent (e.g. G Suite).

NB: Please feel free to apply to us direct via [email protected] by quoting the job reference and job title exactly. SEE DETAILS AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS AD.

If you have previously applied to one of our vacancies and have already sent the required supporting documentation to us, please make this clear when you re-apply as this will help speed up your application.

To help speed up the process of uploading your CV to the client we would suggest that you send us your CV in Word format (or equivalent) if possible, rather than as a PDF.

If you are successful in securing this role, please note that for the entire duration of this contract, regardless of extension you will be working this role at the PAYE rate that has been advertised. For absolute clarity, we only work on a PAYE basis, rather than entertaining umbrella pay terms, we do not offer Ltd/umbrella or outside IR35 rates. If you wish to understand PAYE vs Umbrella more, please let us know and we can send you some additional information for clarity.