bilingual support assistant in Leicester

This role is based at New Parks House, Leicester with travel across the city and neighbouring areas. You'll work 18.5 hours per week during term time only on a permanent basis. Flexibility is important. On occasion you may be required to work evenings to attend meetings.

As a bilingual support assistant, you will provide support to City Psychology Service staff in their assessment of bilingual pupils, as well as supporting parents, teachers and stakeholders in promoting educational achievement of bilingual children who may have learning difficulties at home and in a variety of educational and other settings. You will take an active role in developing our service, ensuring that our practice and delivery continues to evolve and is responsive to changing priorities, community needs and current research developments. You will provide effective delivery as part of a small community cohesion team, under the direction of a bilingual teacher working within the City Psychology Service. Our bilingual support assistants assist Educational Psychologists in their work with children and parents/carers from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. You will play a particular role in supporting children and their families who speak English as an Additional Language who are referred to the service.

What You'll need:

• Being fluent in one or several community languages spoken in the city of Leicester: Arabic, Portuguese, Somali, Urdu, Gujarati, Hindi, Punjabi, Polish, Slovakian and Hungarian.
• Identifying, understanding and promoting the linguistic and cultural needs of bilingual children with special educational or other psychological/emotional wellbeing/mental health needs.
• Having experience of working with children and young people in an education setting.
• Ability to explain complicated procedures and processes to families who experience language and learning difficulties, in their own language.
• An enhanced DBS check is required for this post.

We have a strong commitment and culture of collaborative working both within and across local services, and we continue to deliver a broad range of psychological services. Our service model includes working with our City schools through a link EP arrangement, giving the opportunity to develop our creative delivery of psychology for learning and participation, working with the virtual school, children and young people's justice service, international new arrivals, anti-bullying (Positive Peaceful Places) and with designated specialist provisions in mainstream settings.

We are looking for a determined and talented bilingual support assistant who is an excellent practitioner, with high expectations of pupil achievement. Helping students overcome barriers to access education, which could be due to special educational needs, wellbeing, language acquisition needs, including where there is uncertainty over the difficulties in learning which are associated with SEND or acquiring English as an Additional Language.

Working for Leicester City Council, you will be part of a multi-disciplinary, diverse team that is friendly, supportive, and well-regarded, working in a unique and vibrant multi-cultural city. Our service has a strong commitment to promoting positive outcomes for our children, young people and their families within Leicester City.