Business Support Officer - PO1 2AL, United Kingdom... in Portsmouth

Job Category: Administration

Region / Division: UK Region

Location: Floor 4 Core 4 Civic Offices

Working Hours: 26 Part time Business Support Officer 26 hours per week (Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday: 9:00am to 4:30pm (1 hr lunch) Wednesday non-working day)

The Service: The Building and Supporting Your Future Teams and Child Safety and Asylum Team provide social work support to our children in long-term care placements, unaccompanied minors and support to our care leavers. Staff in these teams are responsible for ensuring that our statutory responsibilities for looked after children and care leavers are properly met.

The Role: Most work involves both written and oral communication to provide high quality customer care and the production of accurate and professional records, as well as the ability to multi-task and work well under pressure.

Responsibilities:

• Dealing with and signposting queries via email and telephone, communicating with professionals and service users daily.
• Booking appointments and arranging meetings.
• Sorting in-coming and out-going post, dealing with all correspondence in confidence.
• Processing purchase orders, i.e. purchasing items as required and correlation of invoices.
• Carrying out all necessary word processing, spreadsheets, database and presentation duties.
• Uploading correspondence and recording information onto caseload systems.
• Facilitating the asylum unaccompanied minors administration process and updating relevant systems in relation to government returns and related in-house processes and procedures.
• Arranging interpreters on behalf of the team.
• Taking minutes of more complex meetings, Safeguarding Strategy meetings and often of a sensitive and/or confidential nature.

Please ensure that you read the full job profile attached for the details and expectations of this role, paying particular attention to the section Who is the person as you will need to refer to this when completing your Personal statement.

The ideal candidate will need to:

• Have experience in administrative roles (ideally within Children’s or Young People’s Services).
• Be able to take accurate minutes of complex and confidential meetings.
• Be proficient in Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint, Outlook).
• Exhibit excellent attention to detail, organisational skills, and the ability to prioritise workloads.
• Demonstrate resilience and professionalism when dealing with sensitive information.
• Understand Data Protection and Safeguarding principles.
• Provide outstanding customer service and support to both internal and external stakeholders.

Attendance requirements to the designated workplace for the role in line with the Hybrid Working: You will be required to work a minimum of 2 days in the office per week. Initially you will work in the office full time then transfer to hybrid working.

Application process: We anonymise applications during application & shortlisting to ensure only relevant information is considered. As part of your application we ask that you complete a personal statement, this statement is crucial and is where you must demonstrate how you meet the requirements of the job against each of the points described in the Who is the Person points on the Job Profile using examples from your experience or transferable skills. This might be through qualifications or descriptive examples from your work/personal experience.

We are a disability confident employer and Armed Forces Covenant gold standard. More information can be found at Equality, diversity and inclusion - Careers portal. We are committed to offering an interview to all those candidates that qualify under our corporate commitments and meet the minimum criteria, however, for roles that receive a large number of applications, we will select the candidates that best meet the minimum criteria.

You will need to demonstrate that you have the Right to Work in the UK. No post will be offered without it.

About Portsmouth City Council: Portsmouth City Council is a unique organisation, committed to making a difference, and is guided by core values that set who we are as people, what we stand for, and how we act. Read more about working at Portsmouth City Council and our benefits on our careers portal homepage.

Portsmouth City Council is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, and young people, and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment. DBS Disclosure at Enhanced level will be required prior to any offer of employment and this post is exempt from the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974. Every post is subject to PCC and Portsmouth Safeguarding Children Partnership safer recruitment procedures.

Should you require any support in completing the application form please contact or call the recruitment team.