Assistant Prevention Practitioner

Assistant Prevention Practitioners work closely with the YJS Early Help Team Manager, and are based within the Essex Youth Justice Service (YJS) quadrant teams, working alongside YJS case managers (who retain overall case responsibility) to deliver specific and targeted support and intervention to families open to the YJS.

The post holder will provide bespoke, practical support to children, young people and their families as part of the multi-agency YJS team. The role will incorporate aspects of targeted intervention work, which supports the overall assessment and case planning for the family. This support will be focused, time limited, and with measurable impact.

Contributing to the YJS aim of preventing the criminalisation of children and young people, Assistant Prevention Practitioners will facilitate school attendance, positive activities and opportunities to help families to develop the resilience to support children and young people effectively through working closely with them, their schools and other relevant key agencies and partners.

What does an Assistant Prevention Practitioner do?

• Build strong, effective relationships with the child, young person and family which support relationship and strengths based social work practice. Intervention support will include direct, hands-on support to children, young people and their families to facilitate school attendance, engagement in positive activities and new opportunities.


• Work collaboratively across the service, with internal and external professional partner agencies to contribute to the overall work and success of the service to ensure improved outcomes for children and families.


• Contribute to meetings and reviews, to provide information which builds an understanding of the child and family's strengths and needs.


• Responsible for ensuring risk and safeguarding processes are followed in accordance with YJS policies and procedures with oversight from a Senior Practitioner.


• Responsible for maintaining consistent, accurate and timely record keeping, utilising the Youth Justice case management system (IYSS).


• Specific individual and shared targets and objectives are defined annually within the performance management framework.
  
  Educated to NVQ/BTEC Level 3 or equivalent experience.


• Evidence of continuing professional development, aligned to any relevant Professional Competency/Capability frameworks or Knowledge and Skills Statements.


• Demonstrable experience of working directly with young people, with evidence of engagement with hard-to-reach young people and their families/carers.


Desirable:

• Excellent communication skills and IT literate, to ensure high quality data input on the YJS case management system.


• Ability to work effectively as part of a multi-disciplinary team and across organisational boundaries.


• Previous experience in an Early Help team or Youth Justice Team setting


The role requires you to be mobile throughout a wider operational area including travelling around the county of Essex and beyond, transporting service users and their belongings and to be able to do so in an emergency. Driving licence and car or the ability to meet the mobility requirements of the role through other means is essential.

Essex Youth Justice Service (YJS) is looking for an exceptional individual to support its whole family approach to Early Help provision within the West locality area - Harlow, Epping Forest, Saffron Walden and Brentwood., As part of employment with Essex County Council (ECC) should your role require a DBS check you will be required to register with the DBS update service. The DBS update service ensures all registered DBS certificates are kept up to date and allows authorised parties to view the status of your certificate. This is an annual subscription, and you will be responsible for ensuring this is maintained. For further information on the DBS update service please go to https://www.gov.uk/dbs-update-service