Family Time Worker

Are you passionate about making a difference to children lives who are placed in local authority foster care? You’ll play a critical role in supporting children in understanding their birth identity and supervising their time with birth parents.

Children and their families are the centre of everything we do, and we’re looking for people to join us who have the skills to encourage and help maintain positive relationships between children and parents. We work with very vulnerable children and so we must ensure we maintain professional relationships whilst managing complex family needs and behaviours.

Our Family Time Workers are crucial when it comes to supporting vulnerable children and families in our community and with flexible working you can fit work around your own commitments.

There is a weekend rota and 1 in 4 weekends are worked to support our families. This is a permanent full time post based in Leek however you will be expected to travel both within and outside of county at times.

In this role you'll:

• work with very vulnerable children and families including significant others such as grandparents and friends.
• be passionate about making a difference to children's lives who are placed in local authority foster care
• play a critical role in supporting children in understanding their birth identity and supervising their time with birth parents. maintain professional relationships whilst managing complex family needs and behaviours.

• support families to spend quality time together when they can’t live together and supports children in getting to and from school where absolutely necessary and to and from their time with their families.

• be expected to keep clear and detailed notes of the sessions that you supervise, which will be then stored in line with our recording policy.

As well as a passion for helping and supporting children and their families you’ll need to have:

• A minimum NVQ 3 in working with children and families or equivalent experience of working with children and families
• Experience of direct work with children, their families and carers in a statutory or voluntary agency which provides services to vulnerable children and their families
• Experience in the use of IT including Microsoft packages
• An understanding of child development and the effect of stress and trauma on child development
• An understanding of the key pieces of policy, guidance and legislation which govern children’s social care
• Have access to a vehicle and a driving licence

You will also need to be flexible to work evenings and occasional weekends as needed to ensure we can provide support to families at suitable times. This might be working earlier some days doing school runs and family time in the mornings.

Then other days it could be starting later so you can do school pick ups and family time after school. We do our rota’s around a month in advance though, so there’s plenty of opportunity to make your working hours work for you.

Interviews will be held: Thursday 18 December 2025.

For an informal chat about the roles, please contact: Alison Machin, Team Manager - alison.machin@staffordshire.gov.uk

Our Recruitment Process: We anonymise applications during shortlisting to ensure only relevant information is considered. Please complete your application fully, especially the supporting statement, to highlight what you’ll bring to the role.

We are no ordinary county council:

Our Values:

The core of who we are as an organisation. Just like we all have personal values that shape our thoughts and behaviour, organisational values drive how we think and act collectively.

Our values were created and shaped by colleague feedback and national best practice and they sit at the heart of People Strategy:

We have a real sense of community spirit that brings our people together. This feeling of belonging means we are all connected to what we do and take pride in the difference we make every day for Staffordshire people. We are ambitious and our sights are set firmly on a better future.

We look forward and race ahead - that goes for your career too.

Our benefits:

We recognise that it is our employees that are central to everything we do. We aim to create a supportive working environment where employees can achieve their full potential and achieve a healthy work-life balance.

In addition to your salary, as a member of staff, you will have access to Our rewards and benefits - Careers at Staffordshire

Our recruitment process:

As an Authority we are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people/vulnerable adults and expect all staff and volunteers to share this commitment.

Staffordshire County Council is an equal opportunities organisation and Disability Confident employer. We encourage applications from all background and communities

As part of our commitment as a Disability Confident employer, a Gold Award Armed Forces employer and our commitment to supporting care leavers - we offer a guaranteed interview as long as your application meets the minimum criteria for the post.

As you’ll know safeguarding and promoting the welfare of our children and young people/vulnerable adults is important to us and that’s why this position is subject to a criminal record check from the Disclosure and Barring Service. If applicable you should disclose details of unspent and unfiltered spent reprimands, formal warnings, cautions and convictions in your application form.