Family Link Social Worker

About the Service

Haringey Council’s fostering service is committed to proving high quality services to Children and Young Adults within its care, and in doing so to raise the profile of fostering to ensure all our children have positive experiences whilst living away from their birth families.
The service is responsible for the recruitment, assessment, training and support of all internally approved foster carers including those who are that are placed with ‘Connected Persons’.
The role we are advertising is for a Family Link Social Worker that will predominantly be based within the Disabled Children’s Service, with support from the fostering service specifically in relation to meeting the fostering regulations with the family link service.
The Family Link Social Worker will be involved in recruiting, assessing, supporting and training carers who are approved under the Fostering Regulations. Family Link carers are assessed as Foster Carers; this involves comprehensive checks/procedures and a series of in-depth visits in order to probe the applicants’ motivation and suitability.
Family Link sits within the Disabled Children’s Service, providing a comprehensive and integrated social care pathway for children and young people  with Learning Disabilities and other disabilities from childhood into adolescence and up to adulthood.
The Family Link Social Worker will be responsible for the provision of a specialist short break service that links disabled children and their parents with another family or individual to give them a short break on a regular basis. This could be overnight or day support.
Though the role will be based within the Disabled Children’s Service, there will be an overlap with Haringey’s Fostering Service where clinical supervision will be provided by a Fostering Manager.

Fostering Service is committed to:

• Ensuring that the service exceeds the requirements of the Fostering Services Regulations, National Minimum Standards and best practice.
• Engage and empower all children and young people to have a more effective voice in making decisions about their own care and planning service developments.
• Ensure that children unable to return to their birth family have agreed permanency plans which give them appropriate legal security and are progressed on a timescale that is right for the child. By developing the use of Special Guardianship and rationalising the delivery of Long Term Fostering.
• Support IROs to review Care Plans at every Looked After Child Review and make certain the plan for permanence is addressed at the 2nd review with clear timescales for implementation of the permanence plan.
• Make sure that every child and young person is provided with information about the services to be provided and the independent support systems, through the Haringey’s Children’s Guide.
• Provide foster carers with supervision & support and learning & development opportunities which will enable them to promote positive outcomes in all areas of children and young people’s lives
• Employ skilled and competent social workers and ensure they make use of the council policies, procedures and systems effectively and equitably to increase the efficiency of the service so improving performance against agreed outcomes for children.
• Promote Haringey’s priorities for children and young people – as detailed in the Children and Young People’s Plan with a particular emphasis on promoting outcomes for children in care.

About the Team

The team provides social work / social care support to children, young people and their families. The children / young people we work with have profound disabilities which significantly impact on their ability to independently engage in services akin to their nondisabled peers.
Giving parent/ carers a break from the caring duties is an integral part of the support offered to families.
Much of the support offered is identified following the completion of a child and family assessment.
The disabled team works closely with our colleagues in health and special educational needs this ensures a multi-agency approach to supporting a disabled child / young person.