Family Link Worker Young People & Transitions in Huddersfield

Salary: £27,000

Hours: Up to Full Time (37.5 Hours)

Location: Russell House, Huddersfield

Responsible to: Family Support Team Leader

Responsible for: Family Support Volunteers (based upon family allocation)

Benefits:

• Entry into Peoples Pension
• Death in service benefit (3 x salary)
• Out of pocket expenses
• Free on-site parking
• Free access to confidential and extensive wellbeing support
• Generous holiday entitlement (26 days plus bank holidays rising to 31 days after 5 years for a full-time employee pro rata for part-time)
• An extra day’s holiday for your birthday!
• Free tea/coffee, sight tests, and flu jabs
• Excellent learning and development opportunities

OVERVIEW OF ROLE

Families caring for children with life-shortening and highly complex health conditions tell us their lives can feel really challenging and chaotic. Accessing and navigating palliative care or help with symptom management, dealing with multiple agencies and health professionals alongside practical issues around finances, getting the right equipment or adapting the home can be exhausting, stressful, and scary.

Forget Me Not Children’s Hospice has been here for over 10 years providing CQC-rated outstanding support for children and families across West Yorkshire. But we want to do more to enable families to live well. We are developing new ways to assess and meet families' needs to ensure every member of each family gets the support they need at the right time. And that’s where you come in.

As part of our family support team, you’ll help us to develop and embed this new way of working. You’ll support a caseload of families providing information, advice, advocacy, and handholding. And you’ll link families to and help them navigate tailored support both in-house and by collaborating with local partners. You’ll also work to build partnerships with external services including by tapping into community groups across our region to ensure support is culturally appropriate and accessible to all.

This role will focus primarily (although not exclusively) on supporting the older children, young people, and families on our caseload including supporting those transitioning to beyond our support.

You’ll be experienced in working with families with complex needs and in complex circumstances providing support that is person-centred and strengths-based. You might currently be working in education, health, or social care but you’ll have an understanding of palliative care and have experience of multi-agency collaboration.

We welcome applications from all candidates particularly those who have experience of engaging with families from diverse cultural, ethnic, and faith backgrounds. We value a strong understanding of how cultural, religious, and spiritual beliefs may influence care, communication, and support needs. The ability to speak additional community languages relevant to our local population is highly desirable and would support our commitment to inclusive, accessible family care.

Most of all, you’ll be excited to be part of a new approach to supporting families that will make a positive difference to their lives. If that sounds like you then please apply now!

To find out more about working for Forget Me Not Children’s Hospice please see our recruitment pack. For an informal chat about the role please contact Stacey.

JOB DESCRIPTION

ROLE SUMMARY

Our vision is to deliver pioneering care through pregnancy, childhood, and loss wherever families need us, whatever the future holds. This role supports our vision by providing holistic family-centred care to babies, children, and young people with life-limiting and life-threatening conditions and their families within the family support team as well as working collaboratively with external providers within local communities.

We recognise that families across our local area come from a wide range of cultural, spiritual, and socio-economic backgrounds, each with unique experiences and needs. The Family Link Worker plays a key role in ensuring that all families, particularly those who have historically faced barriers to accessing care, feel welcomed, understood, and supported. This includes actively promoting access and inclusion, adapting approaches to reflect cultural and spiritual values, and working in partnership with community groups and networks to reach underserved populations. Through this work, the role will help ensure our care is equitable, culturally competent, and responsive to the rich diversity of the communities we serve.

Working as part of our family support team, you’ll be a key point of contact for a caseload of families supporting them to navigate the complex systems of palliative care and bereavement; providing information, advice, advocacy, and handholding with the aim of increased independence, resilience, and empowerment.

In this family link role, your specific focus will be to help develop and embed a new way of working with families focusing on further developing our holistic outcome-focused family assessment, support, and review pathways. You’ll help to link families to personalised support and enablement through both our in-house services and by collaborating with local partner agencies and organisations.

MAIN DUTIES AND KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

FAMILY LINK RESPONSIBILITIES

• Undertake holistic parent-centred family assessments ensuring that there is a clear understanding of the needs and goals of each family member with a co-produced outcome-focused plan put into action.
• Work alongside members of the care team, midwife, or other members of the family support team to coordinate the support offered to individual families.
• Provide navigational support and signposting for parents/carers and other immediate family members to access support and services outside of Forget Me Not; this may include information, advice, and support in respect of home and family life, financial and employment matters, education, health, and community inclusion.
• Develop partnerships and collaborations with key external organisations to further develop and enhance our support to families.
• Support signposting to partner organisations through building up knowledge and links in the local community.

FAMILY SUPPORT RESPONSIBILITIES

• Help assess, plan, deliver, and review holistic family-centred care and support to a caseload of babies, children, and families in the community or in the hospice working alongside other family support team and care coordinators.
• Deliver practical and emotional support that is best practice evidence-based and meets all statutory requirements.
• Undertake specific family support tasks during pregnancy, birth, into childhood, and during the initial period following a child's death aimed at supporting the needs and emotional wellbeing of families including parents and the wider family.
• Provide initial, immediate, and practical help and signposting to families at times of need including changes in circumstances, wellbeing, and bereavement.
• Support families in making informed choices regarding options during palliative end-of-life care for their child and post-bereavement.
• Work seamlessly with clinical care and family support team members responding promptly to any identified needs or changes in the circumstances of the individuals or families supported.
• Participate in the in-reach service alongside other team members including but not limited to initial hospice visits, support appointments, delivering presentations, and transportation of baby/child and family as appropriate including the transportation of family and deceased patients from hospital to the hospice family suite (snowflake)/home.
• Facilitate memory-making opportunities for the families with both colleagues and external professionals. This includes but is not exclusive to tribute funds, grants, and wishes, and linking families in with the fundraising team when appropriate.
• Undertake high-quality system recording to support the family journey as well as service performance indicators and family case studies.
• Complete and maintain core competencies associated with the role and use this knowledge to safely undertake care delivery.
• Share knowledge and skills with care team colleagues providing support and training where appropriate.
• Be responsible for your own ongoing practice development and lifelong learning including actively participating in appraisal, practice supervision, reflective practice, education, and training.
• Contribute to the development of current and new services and other initiatives.
• Ensure that family feedback is sought, outcomes for families tracked, and reported through agreed channels.
• Where appropriate, manage a small budget.
• Work with and support volunteers assisting in family support activities.
• Support the organisation to meet CQC fundamental standards (for example in safeguarding, infection prevention and control, and health and safety).
• Work within the guidelines of the Local Safeguarding Children’s Board (LSCB) procedures.

PERSON SPECIFICATION

SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE

ESSENTIAL

• Experience of working with families and children with complex needs in a professional setting such as early years, education, health, or social care.
• Experience of managing a complex caseload where competing demands and constant interruptions to the work pattern require the workload to be prioritised.
• Understanding of the work of a children’s hospice and the need for specific care of children and young people.
• Understanding of the key aspects of family support including support for parent/carers, grief, loss, and bereavement.
• Proven track record of engaging with families from diverse cultural, ethnic, and faith backgrounds with a strong understanding of how cultural, religious, and spiritual beliefs may influence care, communication, and support needs.
• Able to work in a palliative care environment including bereavement suite support.
• Knowledge of current legislation relating to babies, children & young people including best practice in safeguarding children.
• Ability to work within community settings meeting professionals and leaders of community groups.
• Proven track record of reliability.
• Evidence of a good standard of written and effective oral communication skills.
• IT literate (e.g. word processing, email, recording systems).
• Able to interpret and follow written instructions such as care plans.
• Enthusiastic and confident approach to work.
• Good teamwork and ability to support other team members.

UNDERSTANDING OF EVIDENCE-BASED PRACTICE

• Able to work independently and in partnership with members of the Multidisciplinary Care Team.
• ABLE TO PRIORITISE WORK AND EFFECTIVELY MANAGE TIME.
• Ability to set and maintain professional boundaries with staff, children, family, and visitors.
• POSITIVE ATTITUDE TOWARDS CHANGE.
• Able to work flexibly including occasional evening and weekend work.
• ABLE TO ACT ON OWN INITIATIVE IN DELIVERING CARE.
• Able to act on own initiative in delivering care recognising when to seek supervision and advice from a more experienced member of the team.

DESIRABLE

• Ability to speak additional community languages.
• Experience of working in a palliative care service and providing community care services.
• Knowledge of the wide range of services available to children and families in the locality.
• Knowledge of trauma-informed care principles.
• Experience of training others.
• Experience of working with volunteers.
• Understanding and experience of managing safeguarding concerns including following safeguarding referral processes and liaising with social care professionals.
• Knowledge of different multi-agency assessments including housing, mobility adaptations, social care assessments, and education assessments.
• Experience of person-centred planning.

EDUCATION / QUALIFICATIONS

ESSENTIAL

• NVQ level 3 (health and social care) qualification or equivalent experience.

DESIRABLE

• Childcare and Learning Development (CCLD) / CHCHE / BTEC / NVQ level 3 or equivalent.
• Counselling qualification / Counselling / bereavement course.
• Advanced communication training.
• Additional community language(s).
• Degree in a relevant subject.

As this role involves working out in the community, you will need to have a full clean driving licence and access to a car for work purposes. This role will involve evening and weekend work to best support the needs of families. This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.

EQUALITY AND DIVERSITY

Please note that we are committed to equality and diversity and make the following pledge in relation to our recruitment practices; We will actively encourage and support under-represented groups to join us as employees. If you would like to apply in an alternative way for this post please contact us. We will always interview you if you are an applicant with a disability who meets the essential requirements of the job and will provide adjustments to the recruitment process if required. We are committed to supporting part-time and flexible working; we will consider part-time working requests for all our roles.

This role has been funded by The National Lottery Community Fund for the next three years (1st April 2025 - 31st March 2028) but is a permanent role. It is thanks to Lottery players that charities like Forget Me Not Children’s Hospice can benefit from funds that support our communities.