About Southwark:
Southwark is a large, ambitious and progressive council with a ‘can do’ attitude and enviable reputation. As a council, we are successful, passionate and forward-thinking. We are committed to our ‘Fairer Futures for All’ promise which ensures that our residents and businesses are central to everything we do. Southwark has a varied mix of cultural communities, where over 120 languages are spoken in Southwark. We have all the challenges you'd find in any inner city area. Southwark Council is an Equal Opportunity Employer.
The role:
We are growing our Children's Rights and Participation Team and are looking for an enthusiastic, motivated and creative person who has outstanding skills to engage and work with children and young people.
We are looking for someone who will ensure care experienced children and young people are at the heart of decision making in Southwark and who will champion children's rights and their participation. You will have a strong understanding of advocacy and the rights and entitlements of care experienced children and young people. You will need to be able to constructively challenge social work practice to get the best outcomes for children and young people.
You will support the children in care council - known as Speaker Box and help us to grow membership, particularly for children and young people who are living out of borough or in custody as well as unaccompanied asylum seeking children. You will also be involved in planning and facilitating a programme of activities throughout the year for care experienced children and young people.
You will work with partner agencies/organisations, oversee the advocacy and independent visitor contract and any future commissioning in relation to the contract.
You will also provide training to Speakerbox members and facilitate their participation in the recruitment of social work staff. There will also be opportunities to deliver training to social work teams alongside children and young people.
We, the young active members of SpeakerBox, are quite a diverse group. We vary between the ages of 13 to 25, have a variety of abilities and come from a multitude of cultural backgrounds. We have a lot to say and want to grow and expand our reach, whilst enabling and encouraging more care-experienced young people to get involved, both older and younger. We also want more underrepresented young people to get involved, like young people with disabilities, unaccompanied minors and those from the LGBTQIA+ community. Essentially, we want every care experienced young person to feel more inspired in getting involved. We want this for SpeakerBox because it is important for everyone’s voices to be included, heard and amplified. Being included and being heard is extremely important to us because some of us, from our past, know how it feels not to feel heard and we do not want that for anyone. We recognise that all of our experiences may be different, so even more reason why we want to ensure that we become even more inclusive. The person who comes on board should see our vision and help us make it a reality!
The ideal person should be –
- Responsible and hard working
-Bubbly with a good sense of humour
-Relatable, friendly, charismatic and be able to appropriately articulate themselves in a way that young people can understand
- Have a lot of positive energy and good vibes
- Has a positive outlook on life
- They should be excited and enthusiastic about working with young people
- They should be creative and not afraid to think outside of the box
- Accessible and responsive
- Flexible and adaptable with their approach whilst working with young people
Additional salary details
Benefits and more information:
From flexible working to job sharing (where possible) we are committed to providing a healthy work life balance. You will benefit from 28 days annual leave (plus bank holidays), rising to 36 days with continuous service, a generous local government salary related pension, cycle to work and cycle loan scheme, season-ticket loan, confidential wellbeing and counselling support. For more information about the wide variety of benefits you can take advantage of please visit our Staff Benefits page.
Recruitment timetable
Applications close: 9th February 2023
Interviews and Assessments: 20th February 2023
We are an organisation who is passionate about our people and understands that richness of diversity is a requirement to provide the best possible services to our communities. This is demonstrated through our council-wide ambitious commitment to tackle racial inequality in our communities and workforce through our Southwark Stands Together programme. We particularly welcome applications from members of the Black, Asian and ethnic minority communities to increase representation at all levels in the Council.
If you would like an informal discussion please contact Clare Ryan at clare.ryan@southwark.gov.uk
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