Are you passionate about helping families create their own plans to overcome the challenges they face?
Excited to enable positive changes for children?
Ready for a fresh challenge?
We’d love to welcome you to Changing Futures North East, a small close-knit Charity where you will make a huge difference.
Changing Futures provides excellent relationship-focused support services for families.
As part of our continued commitment to empowering and enabling families to be the authors of their own process of change, we are pleased to be facilitating family group conferences for some families in Hartlepool.
You will work with family members to help identify their family networks and make plans for a conference to draw on the network’s resources. You will facilitate Family Group Conferences to help families create plans that address children and young people’s needs and meet social workers’ essential criteria; to develop relevant, appropriate and effective plans which the family own.
As someone with experience of working with families, you will be skilled in working in a strengths based and relationship focused approach to identify and build rapport with the family network helping them to recognise their importance and role in children’s wellbeing. With an understanding of family relationships and dynamics, you will support the family to meet and create plans for change, to support children and young people to thrive.
You will ideally have either experience of facilitating family group conferences, family network meetings or groupwork or couples’ programmes (although other suitable experience will be considered). You will be committed to continuous professional development.
There is an opportunity to train as a family mediator alongside this role and be fully funded to complete the training programme.
Why we do what we do
We believe that all individuals and families should be given the opportunity to identify their own solutions to the challenges they face.
Whilst it may not be simple and easy for everyone to identify these solutions, as challenges can feel so large, we believe people are experts in their own lives, and with the right supportive and helpful approaches, they can discover and draw on their own strengths to make their own sustainable plans for change.
Core aspects of the role
· Working under the direction and supervision of the partner agency leader and to work alongside and support Family Support Workers and Social Workers in identifying and establishing family networks.
· Engage family, and other network members in Family Network meetings to develop family led plans.
· Ensure that children’s views are understood and appreciated by family members when developing these plans.
· Maintain links to the Charity and its range of services and support and signpost families to them where appropriate.
Role duration
We’re investing in this role with an initial allocation of funding to 30th June 2026.
We are working closely with partners and expect high demand for Family Group Conference work into the future, but extensions will be subject to funding.
We have high demand for mediation and want to grow this service.
Working arrangements
You’ll need to do some evening work, and perhaps weekend work.
We try to be flexible when people need to adapt their working days to fit family and life commitments. We also offer a good holiday package, ranging from 27 to 30 days pro rata depending on length of service.
The vast majority of your time would be spent working in Hartlepool. You might be based in our team and work from home, as needed.