Kinship Navigator - West Dunbartonshire (Family Support Worker) in Clydebank

About Kinship

We are Kinship. The leading kinship care charity.

We're here for kinship carers - friends or family who step up to raise a child when their parents aren't able to.

We support kinship families across England and Wales and are expanding our work into Scotland.

Let’s commit to change for kinship families.

Purpose of the role

The Kinship Navigator provides intensive, time-limited support to kinship carers through the Kinship Connected programme, a structured six-month intervention designed to help kinship families stabilise placements and access the support they need.

Working directly with kinship carers in West Dunbartonshire, you will build trusting relationships while completing structured assessments, goal setting and reviews to help families strengthen their support networks and navigate services such as children’s social care, education, health and community support.

This is a community-facing role, working from Y Sort It’s offices and directly in kinship carers’ homes and community spaces.

You will work alongside Y Sort It’s Intandem mentors to ensure that both carers and the children they care for receive coordinated, complementary support.

Accurate recording of your work is essential to enable Kinship and Inspiring Scotland to understand what is working, demonstrate impact and learn from this pioneering pilot.

Direct support

You will provide intensive one-to-one support to kinship carers for up to six months, working within the delivery approach set out in the Kinship Connected Service Manual.

You will also establish and facilitate a monthly support group for kinship carers in West Dunbartonshire.

• Providing emotional and practical support to kinship carers.
• Completing structured needs assessments, SMART goal setting and regular reviews with kinship carers.
• Advocating for kinship carers in meetings with professionals where appropriate.
• Establishing and facilitating a monthly support group for kinship carers in the local area.
• Mapping local services and building relationships with organisations that can provide specialist support, training or activities for kinship families in West Dunbartonshire.
• Liaising with schools, local authorities and other professionals to coordinate support around families.
• Supporting kinship carers with challenges relating to the child(ren) in their kinship care.
• Signposting to relevant services, support organisations and Kinship training opportunities.
• Referring children in kinship care to Y Sort It’s Intandem mentoring programme where appropriate.
• Coordinating celebration and family events (including in Kinship Care Week).
• Supporting applications for grants for essential items or family breaks.
• Partnership working with Y Sort It and Inspiring Scotland
• Work closely and collaboratively with Y Sort It colleagues on a day-to-day basis, building a strong co-location relationship that benefits kinship families.
• Develop and maintain clear cross-referral pathways between Kinship Connected and Y Sort It’s Intandem mentoring programme.
• Contribute to joint learning and shared reflection about how the whole-family model is working and what outcomes are being achieved for both carers and children.
• Represent Kinship professionally in all interactions with Y Sort It, Inspiring Scotland and other local partners.
• Participate in any joint reporting, learning or evaluation activities required by Inspiring Scotland.
• Collaboration and wider partnership working
• Build constructive relationships with West Dunbartonshire Council and other statutory and voluntary sector partners to support awareness of the programme and effective referral pathways.
• Work closely with colleagues across Kinship, including Peer Support, Training and Communications, to ensure kinship carers in West Dunbartonshire can access the full range of Kinship’s support.
• Contribute to cross-team learning, sharing emerging insights about kinship carers’ experiences and the local landscape in Scotland to inform Kinship’s broader organisational learning.
• Represent Kinship at local meetings, networks or events to strengthen collaboration and raise awareness of kinship care in Scotland.
• Safeguarding and risk management

Kinship has a robust safeguarding structure.

You will be supported by a Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL) and Designated Deputy Safeguarding Leads (DDSL).

In line with this policy, and mindful of the Scottish legislative and practice context, you will:

• Recognise, report, record, respond and refer safeguarding risks via our safeguarding process with the support of the safeguarding team.
• Follow and understand Kinship’s organisational safeguarding policies, as well as relevant Scottish guidance and legislation.
• Complete risk assessments for events in line with Kinship’s policy.
• Follow the Kinship Health and Safety policy.
• Use the Stay Safe lone worker app.
• Monitoring, evaluation and data quality

Accurate and consistent data recording is a core requirement of this role.

As Kinship Connected in West Dunbartonshire is a pilot programme, high-quality records and documentation are essential to demonstrate impact to Inspiring Scotland and to generate the learning that will inform future development of Kinship’s work in Scotland.

• Maintain accurate, timely records of all activity, assessments, support plans, contacts and outcomes on Kinship’s CRM system (Salesforce) in line with organisational policy and programme protocols.
• Complete kinship carer needs assessments, SMART goal setting, reviews and outcome recording in accordance with the Kinship Navigator model.
• Contribute to monitoring and reporting requirements for Inspiring Scotland, ensuring activity and outcomes are documented consistently.
• Fully contribute to quality assurance and learning processes, including collecting feedback and case studies that demonstrate impact for kinship families.
• Contribute to the learning about how co-location with Y Sort It supports whole-family outcomes
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