Family Support Worker - Life Story Worker

As a Life Story Worker, you will play a vital role in helping children in care make sense of their experiences, understand their journey, and develop a strong sense of identity and belonging. This is both a relational and purposeful role, requiring sensitivity, consistency and a strong child-centred approach. You will take the lead in delivering life story work, working directly with children and young people using creative, age-appropriate and trauma-informed approaches. This will involve gathering and organising information from a range of sources, including case records, professionals and carers, and supporting children to explore their history in a safe, manageable and meaningful way. A key part of the role will be the creation and maintenance of high-quality life story books. You will ensure that these are clear, accurate and accessible to the child, helping them to understand their experiences over time and supporting their emotional wellbeing. You will present information in a way that is honest yet sensitive, enabling children to build a coherent sense of their past and identity. The role requires a high level of emotional awareness, as you will support children to process complex feelings and experiences. You will need to recognise and respond appropriately to children's behaviours and emotional needs, adapting your approach to suit their age, understanding and individual circumstances. You will also work closely with social workers, foster carers and other professionals to ensure that life story work is consistent, up to date and reflective of the child's lived experience. This is a flexible and varied role, involving work across different settings including homes and schools. You will be expected to organise your workload effectively, manage competing demands, and travel across the locality as required.

The Fluency Duty is outlined in the Code of Practice on the English language requirements for public sector workers. The Fluency Duty for this role is Required. You must be able to speak and provide advice in accurate spoken English to the public.

We are a busy and dynamic team who support children in care to spend time with their parents, anyone with PR who is not their parent, siblings, relatives or any other connected person under supervision which we call "family time". It is important that children are supported to maintain and build safe positive relationships with members of their family ensuring that their family time is focussed and shaped around the child's needs. We receive a variety of referrals as part of the assessment process by direction of the court, children under child protection plans, private law arrangements and long-term care plans. We also support in the delivery of life story work. This may be direct life story work with children or completion of life story books. Now is an exciting time to be part of our team as Warwickshire begins to embed our Families First teams who support the young people in our County. Our approach is about locality working, multi disciplinary and multi agency teams that support the whole family. Building strong partnerships with local services, Health, Police and Education., Working for Warwickshire - This is the difference you make: Warwickshire County Council is a place where everyone feels valued, included, safe, supported, and welcome. Our people are at the heart of this vision, could you be one of them! At Warwickshire County Council we are committed to ensuring Warwickshire's economy is vibrant and supported by the right jobs, training, skills and infrastructure. Our people vision for Warwickshire County Council is a great place to work where diverse and talented people are enabled to be their best., Warwickshire County Council are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people and adults. Please be advised successful applicants will be subject to a range of pre-engagement checks, including a relevant Disclosure and Barring Service check (DBS). In accordance with the DBS code of practice and our own policy, should an individual have a declared criminal offence an individual assessment will be completed. Warwickshire County Council adheres to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974.

• Supportive managers who provide recognition and a robust supervision policy focussed on wellbeing and workload.
• A Volunteering & Wellbeing Day in addition to generous annual leave and an additional day at Christmas
• We also offer a Refer a Friend package for some roles. Terms and Conditions apply, Your future matters to us, we provide a generous pension scheme which includes an employer contribution rate of typically around 19 percent per month, to help support your financial security during retirement. The scheme also offers a valuable package of benefits for members and their dependants. To find out more please visit: Warwickshire Pension Fund homepage - Warwickshire Pension Fund.
The benefits we offer include agile working, a valuable part of the pay and reward package for employees working in local government, generous annual leave entitlement, plus bank holidays and an additional day at Christmas, and access to Vivup benefits and discounts platform.