Start for Life Practitioner

Family hubs serve as a localised approach to coordinating the planning and delivery of family services. They integrate various services to enhance accessibility, strengthen connections between families, professionals, and service providers, and prioritise relationships in family support. These hubs provide assistance to families from conception up to the age of two, and support those with children of all ages, specifically from 0-19, or up to 25 for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), featuring a robust Start for Life initiative at their core.

Sandwell Family Hubs:

Barnardo's is honoured to participate in delivering Sandwell's Family Hubs across the Borough. The service offers a variety of high-quality services tailored to meet the needs of the families, designed specifically for the six town areas of the Borough, which are grouped into three clusters:

Cluster A: Oldbury, Smethwick

Cluster B: Tipton, Rowley Regis

Cluster C: Wednesbury and West Bromwich

We are committed to providing a comprehensive service for communities and residents, aimed at enhancing access, minimising engagement barriers, and fostering resilient communities.

As a Start for Life Practitioner you will play a crucial role in developing relationships with families as they transition through the different stages of parenthood, covering the period from newborn to age 2, in alignment with Sandwell's Start for Life initiative (for this position, "parents" refers to parents, caregivers, co-parents, and guardians)**.

Objectives/Key Activities:

• Collaborate within the Health, Well-being, and Engagement team to deliver a wide array of services aimed at enhancing the health and well-being of parents, caregivers, children, and families. This includes various activities designed to:
• Support families as part of the Pregnancy Pathway
• Provide Early Help to families with children from birth to age 2, ensuring inclusion of fathers and co-parents
• Serve as a Key Worker, acting as a point of contact for families.
• Assist with Perinatal Mental Health and Parent Infant Relationship, connecting with other perinatal mental health support networks and receiving training to implement interventions.

The shortlisting criteria:

• Minimum of Level 3 qualification or equivalent in relevant field
• Experience of working with and supporting babies/children/young people and their families to achieve positive outcomes
• secure knowledge and confidence to recognise and respond appropriately on Safeguarding concerns.
• Good communication skills and ability to form strong relationships and partnership links
• Ability to collate and analyse information to produce high quality assessments action plans and reports
• Deliver programmes on a one to one and group delivery
• Efficient at managing own workload and prioritising tasks
• Driven flexible in delivering a high service to families

Although this contract has a permanent status, please be aware that this post is subject to funding currently until 31st March 2026 and therefore should this funding not be extended further, you may be subject to a redundancy consultation or a TUPE arrangement. This contract is due to expire on 31st March 2026

For any queries or additional information, please feel free to contact Sophia Perkins or Samina Saudagar

Pay & Reward Framework

We know that our colleagues go above and beyond in delivering our vital work, driven by their passion and commitment to Barnardo's?values.? We also know that we can only realise our ambitions and achieve better outcomes for more children, thanks to the talent, hard work and creativity of our people.

For all these reasons, we are committed to a new approach to pay and reward, to ensure it is fair, attractive and progressive, which was rolled out in April 2023. This is a positive change for the charity, and a part of our?People & Culture?Strategy. It will assist us in supporting colleagues to belong, thrive and grow in their colleague journey at Barnardo's and in time will offer clear routes of progression for colleagues in both their career and their pay.

Whilst the full pay band and salary range is advertised, our approach to starting salaries is to appoint between the minimum to mid-point of the pay band – this ensures that pay steps are available to reward our colleagues annually based on their contribution to excellence and alignment to our values and behaviours.? More details on Barnardo's pay framework can be found upon application.