Part time role: 30 hours per week

Rated outstanding by the CQC, at Forget Me Not we take a nurse and therapy-led approach to the care and support we provide to families across West Yorkshire.

As well as providing clinical, palliative and end of life care for children with life-limiting conditions, our specialist counselling, therapy and bereavement support for families is vital, pioneering and award-winning. This includes the unique support we provide to families devastated by the sudden and unexpected death of their child. And we are currently delivering an innovative maternal mental health project.

As the first port of call for referrals and working with families at times of acute distress, youll lead our family support team to provide psychosocial support, advocacy and advice, making a real difference to families wellbeing, in the short and longer term.

With your own caseload, youll devise care plans to deliver therapeutic interventions. Youll also support your teams personal development, manage governance and compliance processes, have oversight of the teams caseload and maintain effective communication and liaison between Forget Me Not and other professionals in the community.

You dont need to have worked in a hospice before, (if you want to see what were all about, please contact Lis Meates on 07540 687577 to arrange a look around), but you will have managed a counselling or bereavement service, leading and supervising a multidisciplinary team. Youll have an in-depth understanding of the impact of loss as well as experience of assessing families needs and providing practical, emotional and advocacy support to vulnerable clients.

If youre excited by the opportunity to manage a highly skilled team to deliver a structured service providing families with the holistic and tailored support they need, with the autonomy and scope to further develop our offer then we want to hear from you!

For more information about Forget Me Not Children's Hospice please see our recruitment pack

JOB DESCRIPTION

Responsible to: Director of Service Delivery and Development
Responsible for: Members of the family support team and volunteers

Role Summary

Our vision is to deliver pioneering care through pregnancy, childhood and loss, whenever families need us, whatever the future holds. This role supports our vision by working with families throughout the most challenging times, facing the death of a baby or child.

This role involves managing a team of family support workers which may include counsellors, bereavement support workers, family support workers and other family support roles. You will also be expected to do some direct work with families, including assessments, support sessions and groups.

You will be a source of knowledge and expertise in psychosocial support, advocacy and advice. You will be required to develop the people in your team, set up and manage governance processes, support individual team members within their roles, ensure a helicopter view of the teams caseload and maintain effective communication and liaison between Forget Me Not and other professionals in the community.

Main Duties and Key Responsibilities

Leadership responsibilities

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  Provide day-to-day supervision of case management within your team.
• Monitor caseloads and ensure they are at a manageable volume.
• Conduct 1-2-1s and appraisals with team members, setting objectives and monitoring progress.
• Ensure all team members are given suitable support for their wellbeing and have access to effective and appropriate external professional supervision.
• Provide oversight and step in when required to provide assistance and direction both from a therapeutic and operational perspective.
• Develop and effectively utilise monitoring and evaluation systems to ensure service reliability, consistency and quality.
• Ensure that each element of the service has outcome measures in place, and that the team are skilled in being able to measure the impact of a particular intervention using an outcome measurement tool.
• Reporting on performance against outcome measures to Senior Leadership Team.
• Work with team members to develop service specifications, criteria, outcome measures, and - where necessary - operating procedures for your area of Family Support Team (FST) service delivery.
• Develop and maintain good working relationships with other agencies, statutory and voluntary.
• Attend multidisciplinary meetings in the community as required.
• Maintain close liaison with other care team members who are working directly with the families.
• Collate, and maintain information about the resources available in each area, how families can access services and who to contact.
• Support the development, organisation and facilitation of parents and family support groups and family-based group activities.
• Contribute to the planning, organisation and delivery of bi-annual Memorial Events for bereaved families
• Be responsible for recruitment, induction training, and management of sickness, absence and compliance within your team.
• Contribute to the management of and implementation of relevant projects for the team, including applications for funding, monitoring and reporting.

Operational responsibilities

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  Carry out trauma-informed assessments on individuals and families providing an overview of their emotional, social, practical, environmental and financial needs, family dynamics, strengths and ways of coping. This could include parents, siblings, grandparents and others close to the child or young person with a life limiting or life-threatening condition or a child who has already died.
• Devise care plans, and use counselling skills and knowledge of patterns of bereavement and loss to deliver therapeutic interventions, including individual work, group work and telephone contact to enable children, adults and families to adjust to new and changing situations. Empower families and individual family members to make their own choices and decisions.
• Support families in the decision-making process about the future care of their child and the future wishes of the family, to include the planning of the childs funeral if appropriate.
• Continue to support the family after the death of their child, as appropriate. The frequency of contact being based on family need and a structured pattern of intervention which delivers tangible outcomes within a defined period, but within an empowering process so as not to create dependency on an individual worker or hospice.
• Ensure excellent communication between the hospice, the families and other agencies involved in the child and familys care, including social services, education, GP, childrens community nursing teams, occupational therapist, hospital consultants and voluntary agencies.
• Act as advocate on behalf of child and family as necessary. This includes statutory agencies.
• Ensure that relevant records are kept which are accurate, contemporaneous, and professional and meet legal requirements.
• Be aware of the Statutory Child Death Review guidance and be able to support a family to understand the guidance.
• Understand and contribute to the use of co-production in the planning of groups and the service delivery.
• Comply with hospice and Local Safeguarding Childrens Board policies, procedures and practice.
• Communicate concerns over a child in need of protection or a child in need of support to senior nursing staff, child protection teams or other statutory partners or agencies.
• Engage with and partake in child protection supervision, as required
• Support equality, diversity and rights of all including children, young people and their families and staff.
• Actively promote the consultation of children, young people and families and their involvement and participation in decision making.

We expect all staff to undertake any other duties within the scope, spirit and purpose of the job, the title of the post and its grading, as requested by your line manager or their higher level of authority on behalf of the charity.

For all of our roles we expect employees to abide by the expectations set out within the Together for Families Framework (attached). Complying with Together for Families means that we will all act with integrity to ensure we are trusted by the people we care for, the people we work with and everyone who supports Forget Me Not.

PERSON SPECIFICATION

Skills and experience

Essential

• 
  Experience of managing or supervising a team of people and/or managing a service
• Experience of managing a caseload of work relevant to this role.
• Experience of working with children & families facing loss / bereavement both individually and in a part of a group setting.
• Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal
• Able to work under pressure and in emotive environments
• Mature, reflective and outcomes focussed approach to enabling targeted support
• Experience of working within a multidisciplinary team
• Assessment of psychosocial needs of children / families in need
• Computer literate
• Team player combined with ability to work under minimal supervision
• Flexible, friendly and enthusiastic
• Confidence with ability to make decisions
• Knowledge and experience of working within safeguarding procedures, including liaison with social workers and other professionals.
• Experience of gathering and collating data

Desirable

• 
  Knowledge of childrens hospice services and philosophy
• Experience of planning and delivering training
  
• Experience of monitoring and reporting for funding purposes
• Knowledge of trauma-informed practice.

Education / qualifications

Essential

• 
  Degree level qualification or equivalent level experience in psychology, health, social care, counselling or other directly relevant discipline.

Desirable

• 
  Ongoing professional development on courses focusing on bereavement
• Ongoing professional development related to trauma
• Training in perinatal mental health
• Group facilitation training.

As this role involves working out in the community, you will need to have a full, clean driving licence and access to a car for work purposes.

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion

Please note that we are committed to equality and diversity and make the following pledge in relation to our recruitment practices;

• We will actively encourage and support under-represented groups to join us as employees
• We will always interview you if you are an applicant with disability who meets the essential requirements of the job and will provide adjustments to the recruitment process if required.
• We are committed to supporting part time and flexible working; we will consider part time working requests for all our roles

Please click here to view our full equality, diversity and inclusion pledge.