Agency FCA - Work After First Hearing - Plymouth or Exeter (covering Devon and Torbay)

Family Court Advisor, CAFCASS

Full time

To provide advanced social work-level services to children, families and courts by assessing and analysing court applications for any child protection and serious welfare issues affecting a child or young person. Also, to influence those with parental responsibility to be more child-focused when needed, to advise the courts and Local Authorities about safeguarding concerns and about how a child's life can be improved, supporting judicial case management in the process. To achieve this, you will need to keep the child at the centre of your work through high quality direct work with children and their families as well as high quality analysis and assessment. You will also need to be a skilled negotiator, working persuasively with family members and professionals on behalf of children. You will need to keep the child's timescale in the context of the child's journey through childhood and, where applicable, the care system, at the centre of everything you do and you must be prepared to advocate in the best interests of the child, ensuring their voice is not lost in the court arena. You will be required to be a resilient, reflective and accountable practitioner, possessing good IT and organisational skills, so that you can maintain a high throughput of outstanding casework.

FCA RESPONSIBILITIES AND DUTIES in line with Cafcass Service Standards. (Responsibilities and Duties may vary depending upon specific role): Safeguarding/Child Protection To provide high quality early safeguarding and child protection advice, assessments and analysis to the Court on the needs and best interests of children subject to or involved in Family Proceedings To ensure that the well-being and safety of the child is paramount throughout Cafcass' involvement in the case. To ensure that all incidents or risks of significant harm to the child are dealt with in accordance with the relevant Local Safeguarding Children's Board (LSCB) procedures and Cafcass policies and procedures To directly work with, or on behalf of children & families to achieve safe and positive outcomes for children, referring to other services where this will produce benefit. Service Effectiveness Throughput and Productivity To produce high quality work with a rapid throughput, combining increasing productivity with quality of casework. For all work produced to be rated good or outstanding in internal and external audits, with exceptions tolerated where the learning gained from these exceptions can be absorbed and applied to future work. To be fully engaged with Cafcass policy that all cases must be allocated and to adopt a proportionate approach to work, assessing the needs of the case. In response to changing demands, the regulating mechanism will be the average time spent on cases; which is lower when demands are higher and vice versa.

Be Their Voice

We are Cafcass - the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service - and we represent children in family court cases in England.

Independently advising the family courts about what is safe for children and in their best interests, we speak up for over 140,0000 children every year when the family court makes critical decisions about their futures, ensuring their needs, wishes and feelings are heard.

Benefits

We know if you join us you want to be rewarded in a variety of ways, including time away from work to spend time with those important to you, manage your financial present and future, whilst also be trusted to manage your work/life balance.

Therefore, in addition to our unique, holistic approach to supporting your health and wellbeing we also provide:

Flexible working: Most colleagues work in a hybrid way, having the benefits of working both from the office and home, we also accommodate flexible working requests (e.g. 9-day fortnights).

Generous holidays: 28 days holiday (including three for Christmas) rising to 33 days with five years continuous service, which could include your current employment. You can also buy more holiday or sell any you do not need.

Exclusive discounts: Generous discounts with wide range of companies covering leisure, technology, travel, personal finance, fashion and supermarkets.

Car Leasing schemes: We have our own scheme for colleagues that travel a significant number of business miles, as well as an open scheme through a third party.

Get in touch with Ellie/apply below:

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I look forward to hearing from you soon 😊