Kent County Council
Senior Practitioner
How your CV stacks up
Upload your CV to see how well it fits this job role
?%
Job Title
Permanent Social Care Post: Engagement Support Worker
Overview
We are seeking an enthusiastic and committed Engagement Support Worker to join our non-statutory fostering team in Brook. This role is pivotal in supporting and guiding vulnerable young people towards positive behavioural change and fostering a more tolerant society, all while ensuring their safety is paramount at all times.
The successful applicant will bring a wealth of experience in influencing and engaging with younger learners. Your collaborative skills, together with your patience and resilience, will be crucial in forming a trusted relationship with the young person and their wider network. You will provide support, guidance and education to young people undergoing assessment within the specialist foster care disadvantage programme.
In this exciting role, you will:
- Help develop positive relationships between the young person in our care and their education providers.
- Support the young person’s overall wellbeing by liaising with other services and ensuring their physical, emotional and mental wellbeing is prioritised.
- Ensure the young person’s education needs are met by liaising with schools, colleges and the local authority’s designated family engagement process lead.
- Deliver one-to-one support and targeted exercises tailored to each young person’s specific needs.
- Understand the young person’s culture, race and/or sexuality and value their differences whilst promoting tolerance, acceptance and understanding.
Responsibilities
- Engage with the young person and commit to a collaborative, trust-based approach in all interactions.
- Offer tailored advice and guidance, training, and look for ways to improve the young person’s experiences outside of the specialist foster care programme.
- Liaise with schools, colleges, pastoral support, and individual social workers to determine emotional and educational needs and provide clear, timely recommendations to ensure the young person’s ongoing success and wellbeing.
- Establish an understanding of the child’s culture, ethnicity and/or sexuality to facilitate an inclusive environment, honouring their identity whilst promoting acceptance, tolerance, and understanding in society.
- Co-create activities & interventions with the young person(s) to explore areas of difference and provide support and guidance in areas of concern (e.g., risk-taking behaviour).
- Build collaborative relationships with families, educators, and other key professionals to best support the young person.
- Play an active role in risk and safeguarding by being adult-focused while encouraging age-appropriate independence and decision-making.
- Serve as an ambassador for our programme, sharing insights into the most effective strategies for supporting young people within our team and with other experienced professionals.
Reasons to use Rodeo
Start with a chat, not a search bar
Grad scheme, placement, apprenticeship? Not sure what you want yet — that's fine. Your agent talks it through with you and turns "I have no idea" into a shortlist.
It searches the market for you
Every day your agent scans the market matching roles against what actually matters to you, not just keywords on a CV.
Only hits
No noise. No "maybe this fits." Just roles with a clear explanation of why they're right — and where to focus when applying.
Qualifications, Training & Skills
We are looking for a dynamic and motivational professional, a true believer in contributing to a more tolerant society, to recruit to this exciting team position. As a qualified Social Care Engagement Support Worker, you will be responsible for: Experience & Qualifications:
- Be a fully qualified and registered professional with some work experience related to resilient activity more tangibly grounded in delivering practical interventions with young people. (Such as amongst others):
- Disadvantaged children within social care frameworks.
- Discipline-based experience such as teaching, youth engagement, coaching, mentoring, or (fostering) children’s social worker.
- Specific work where direct scenarios involve addressing risk-taking, differences in culture, race/ethnicity, or sexuality.
- You will also be:
- Primarily qualified in social care. Hold at least a Level 7 degree in Social Work or equivalent credentials.
- Hold a valid Level 2 safeguarding certificate.
- Qualified to provide one-to-one support.
Professional Skills:
- Demonstrate strong teamwork and active listening skills in fostering trust-based partnerships.
- Be self-motivated, focused on setting realistic and obtainable objectives with a clear emphasis on supporting learning, personal growth, and the ability to resolve tensions by encouraging collaborative rather than punitive approaches.
- Be dynamic, positive, optimistic, and upbeat to inspire positivity and find proactive solutions.
- Have strong interpersonal skills, built on rich interactions with young people in their community or educational environments.
- Possess diverse cultural appreciation skills and essential skills to support children and young people from minority backgrounds and integrate their needs into your support strategies.
- Know how to challenge bias while promoting positive healthy change.
- Strong communication skills in all types of settings across all stakeholders.
Personal Skills
- Strong wish to develop practical engagements and skills for young people connected to our work.
- Resilience and a positive, helping hand mindset.
- Ability to live by and promote an inclusive culture advocating young people to share their opinions already at school and within their communities.
Benefits
As a permanent member of our team, expect:
- Highly competitive £47,990 - £53,446 per annum.
- A rewarding career using your expertise and experiences in fostering positive behaviour change and nurturing tolerance.
- Permanent Full Time position (37 hours per week).
- Opportunity to help break the cycle of disadvantage, promoting education equality and improving wellbeing for vulnerable young people.
Get help with your application
Your very own career expert that helps elevate your application to the next level.
About Brook
Brook is the UK’s leading publicly funded sexual health charity for young people. For over 50 years, we have paved the way in providing confidential, practical, health-free sexual health education, counselling, advocacy, skill-based empowerment and expert advice tailored to young people in areas where education and support are lacking.
We go further than any other organisation in fighting inequalities to give every young person a chance to thrive, realising their full potential in all aspects of life and the desired pathways to career and life goals regarding education, employment, and training.
Located in and servicing the United Kingdom (and beyond), we allow every young person to benefit from our proactive services and trusted support with the knowledge that their safety and fostering healthy choices is paramount.
We aim to make every young person’s voice heard without judgment, stigma or discrimination, using their built-in resilience and ability to positively influence their own future and mindset by emulsifying positive growth and contributing valuable, always complimentary tools.
Since the onset of the pandemic, our approach has gathered renewed focus on youth resilience, mental health and online learning opportunities and we continue to welcome volunteers who are committed to closing attitudinal gaps in youth sexual health, mental health and life-skills support.
Closing Date: 10 July 2024 Job Category: Social Care – Children (Qualified)
Job Reference: REF/TP/130508/14861 Contract Type: Contract worked annually for further deployment year filled within these 12-month periods. The initial expected duration is 11 November until further 2026. Thereafter, depending upon the needs of our business and funding levels success of both the programme and staff. Working Hours: 37 hours per week. On-Call activity will only be used when required, in unreasonable cases or when entailing risks to child welfare such as reports, passwords or comms. In this case, we’ll pay for additional time worked. Travel time is not prescribed. Overseas- on-call duty will be extremely limited and only required when part of the funded programme requested per expatriate service delivery needed. Location: Brook House, Nottingham NG1 4NG, England.
“It took my CV and asked me questions relevant to understanding what kind of jobs to suggest for me. Suggestions were almost perfect. Jobs were exactly what I’ve been looking for.”
Jessica, London
Location