Interim Placement Officer x2- Social & Health Care

Reference no: Lewisham 0007 16CB / 1

Pay Rate: £21.96 per hour PAYE

Enhanced DBS with Children’s & Adult’s barred list

The post will be within the Children and & Young People’s Directorate & is based in Placements Service for children and young people.

The roles will deliver efficient and effective commissioning for individual children and young people to meet their individual needs. This will include the commissioning of looked after children placements.

Key responsibilities:

• Ensure compliance with the Council’s policy relating to the placements of children and young people in line with contracting requirements in particular in relation to the Preferred Provider Framework (PPF).
• Provide a service to the Children’s Social Care Division for the accommodation and placement of children, by obtaining appropriate packages of care consistent with the child or young person’s assessed needs.
• As part of the Children’s Social Care Division to actively contribute to high quality of planning and placements for the Council's Looked after Children.
• Develop good working relationships with Placements & Procurement colleagues, social workers, Preferred Provider Framework providers, and other statutory and voluntary agencies in planning and delivering packages of care, support, protection and control for vulnerable children and their families.
• Obtain and collate information on placements and statistical data on Looked After Children, young people and families including children with disabilities and those leaving care.
• Liaise with social workers and others to ascertain the needs of children, young people and families to identify appropriate placements to meet assessed needs.
• Work in conjunction with the Fostering Service to ensure effective use of the Council's Foster Carers.
• Conduct Quality Assurance monitoring visits to collect evidence on the Every Child Matters objectives, evaluate services, produce high quality monitoring reports.
• Provide professional advice to colleagues on availability and quality of services and their compliance with legislation, government guidance, national best practice and standards for the Preferred Provider Framework.
• Provide an effective interface between Children’s Social Care Division and PPF providers: residential care providers, independent fostering agencies and semi-independence providers.

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

Experience & Knowledge / Technical skills

• Must have experience and knowledge of children’s placements and commissioning.
• Significant experience of undertaking placement searches/and good understanding of current market/and challenges.
• Working knowledge of children and young people services.
• Must have contract management and quality assurance experience within children’s social care.
• Experience of undertaking quality assurance monitoring visits and managing the performance of external providers.
• Experience of working within a structured framework, that is governed by legislation, Local Authority requirements and other external agencies.

Skills & Abilities

• Excellent communication skills including the ability to write clearly to a wide range of audiences.
• Ability for successful inter agency working
• Excellent negotiations skills
• Significant knowledge of contract management and managing providers expectations/and contractual agreements.
• Ability to problem solve and to bring appropriate challenge where required.
• Must be able to work in a highly pressurised environment, covering duty, dealing with emergencies and occasional late working

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.