Casual Residential Child Care Worker | Residential Services | Central Lancashire

Casual Residential Child Care Worker | £14.13 per hour | Casual various hours to suit

Our Children’s Residential Service are expanding with the introduction of four new children’s homes and an Adolescent Support Unit over the next two years. This means that we have a number of exciting opportunities for a number of different vacancies across Lancashire – Heysham, Lancaster, Preston, Chorley, Bamber Bridge, Accrington, Clitheroe, Burnley, Great Harwood, and Skelmersdale.

As a Residential Service we hold very strong views and beliefs that our children deserve the very best care and support that we can offer. We pride ourselves in developing positive, meaningful, and lifelong relationships with our children. With an emphasis on working creatively, we promote lots of fun activities for our children inside and outside the homes and ensure that our children and young people are supported to develop in all areas of life.

As a Residential Child Care Worker, you would work from a children’s home where children and young people aged between 11 years and 17 years live. Residential Child Care Workers eat and sleep at the home with the children and young people and undertake basic household tasks – cleaning, cooking, shopping. Our children are not able to live safely with their parent(s) or family and this is usually due to adverse childhood experiences and trauma. Residential Child Care Workers listen and engage our children in 1:1 work around feelings, emotions and behaviours and link with other professionals, such as social workers, schools, police, and health workers to ensure our children’s needs are met.

We encourage our children to participate and get involved in all decisions, and recruitment is no different. It is really important to us that any worker joining the Residential team has the skills, abilities, and outlook that our children tell us they need from us:

• I would like 'someone like me who has time to listen instead of being behind a locked door'
• I would like 'someone who listens to me but also takes action and who I can have a laugh with – they also need to be able to make nice food'
• I would like 'someone who spends time with me'

We have an ambitious, confident, and motivated management team who are experienced, supportive, and keen to help you learn and grow. We have over 50 free courses for you to learn new things, and even have funded qualifications we can support you with obtaining, up to degree level, should this be something that interests you. We have a detailed induction programme specifically designed to cover all elements of the role, so that you have all the tools and knowledge ready to get going. For all permanent staff, we will provide a monthly 1:1 reflective space with managers, a comprehensive Employee Support Offer, and lots of opportunity to network with other professionals that support children.

As an Organisation we offer a wide range of staff benefits including access to our 'Blues and Twos Credit' Union, Membership of Blue Light Card, and various discounts at local retailers.

We are looking for passionate practitioners (irrespective of length of experience) who truly care and want to make a difference to children, young people and families. Some days will be tough, for our children, for you, and for your colleagues - we’re after someone who is dedicated and committed, and who will always go that extra mile for our children (even on the bad days). Working as part of a close professional team is really important and you will need to be a team player to get through those tough times.

We are an expanding service with big ideas and aspirational views. We are looking for workers who can join our team and join us on this exciting journey, making contributions to help shape and inform the future of the service for our children. We are looking for someone who has values aligned to those that are integral to our service and our organisation - supportive, innovative, respectful and collaborative.

We would love to hear from anyone who has a passion for building relationships with children and supporting them to achieve the best possible outcomes and want to join our team. You are welcome to contact any one of our Residential Senior Managers to discuss the role(s) in greater detail and gain more information about the service.

To apply for a post, please ensure you have uploaded and attached your supporting statement to evidence how you meet the criteria for the role. The panel may be unable to shortlist you for interview without this evidence.

The post you are applying for is covered by the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (as amended in 2013). If successful you will be required to apply to the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) for a 'disclosure'. Further information can be found on the 'Our Recruitment Process' tab.

In return Lancashire County Council offers a range of benefits, which can be found on LCC Vacancies website. We reserve the right to close down a vacancy early, before the closing date, if we receive sufficient applications.