Practitioner - AST North

Kent Fostering is on an ambitious journey to strengthen our local foster carer community, enhance support, and improve outcomes for children in care. As a Senior Practitioner in the North Kent Fostering Support Team, you will play a pivotal role in achieving this vision.

This is an exciting and challenging opportunity to join a team focused on increasing placement stability and delivering high-quality support and supervision to foster carers and their families. You will work closely with fostering assessment teams and contribute to the recruitment and retention of foster carers across the county.

Key Responsibilities

· Provide expert supervision and support to foster carers, helping them navigate complex situations and build strong, stable placements for children.

· Deliver high-quality training to foster carers, equipping them with the skills and knowledge to meet the diverse needs of children in their care.

· Lead on complex casework, including placement disruptions, safeguarding concerns, and multi-agency planning, ensuring timely and effective interventions.

· Support foster carers in understanding children's behaviour, using trauma-informed approaches to help sustain relationships and promote emotional wellbeing.

· Mentor and guide less experienced social workers and students, contributing to a culture of learning and reflective practice within the team.

· Work collaboratively with fostering assessment teams to support the recruitment, assessment, and onboarding of new foster carers.

· Contribute to service development, participating in working groups, audits, and quality assurance activities to improve practice and outcomes.

· Ensure compliance with fostering regulations, statutory guidance, and Kent County Council's policies and procedures., This post is considered by KCC to be a customer-facing position. The Council therefore has a statutory duty under Part 7 of the Immigration Act (2016) to ensure that post holders have a command of spoken English/Welsh sufficient for the effective performance of the job requirements. The appropriate standards are set out in the Job Description/Person Specification.

Work that works for you and us - let's talk flexibility!

KCC is committed to building a workforce which reflects the diversity of the county's working residents, encouraging applications from people of all ages, abilities, genders, sexual orientations, ethnic backgrounds, faiths and those with caring responsibilities, and aspires to create an inclusive workplace where everyone can be themselves at work.

Please note - if you are interested, please apply soon as possible as the closing date for this advert may be earlier than stated should a number of suitably qualified candidates apply.