What's involved with this role: Interim Placement Officer - Bi-Borough Children’s Services Job Ref: K&C 5255210 Pay Rate: £205.05 per day PAYE Hours per week: 36 Monday - Friday, normal working hours Role Length: This opening assignment is for 3 months, likely to be extended City: Kensington, London Hybrid working – 2 days in the office Enhanced DBS disclosure required for this role The successful candidate will source private and voluntary placements for children & young people age 0–25, in a range of settings including foster care, residential children’s homes, residential family assessment centre, and Semi-Independent Living accommodation. Key Responsibilities: Assist the team and managers to: manage the children’s placement budget; meet performance targets relating to the placement of LAC; utilising management information as required. Maintain IT (Mosaic) databases and be proficient in the use of ‘Word’ applications. Undertake quality assurance (QA) of placements (via virtual and in-person) and complete written reports to evidence QA findings of residential, fostering and semi-independent provisions and these offer value for money. Receive all requests for new or changes of placement for looked after children in order to provide advice and ensure appropriate placement finding processes are followed. Maintain an overview of children’s placements, advising managers on trends and implications, in particularly regarding placement stability and high cost or long-term external placements. Work alongside and support social workers seeking placements, matching and placing children and reviewing and monitoring outcomes. Work closely with the department’s fostering service to maximise the opportunities to place children with in-house resources. Develop and maintain contract arrangements with Private and Voluntary Children’s Homes and Independent Fostering Agencies through the Commissioning Alliance framework agreements and spot purchase arrangements. Act alongside, or on behalf of social workers, in negotiating the price and contractual arrangements for purchased placements. Assist social workers to monitor outcomes and contract compliance and take up any issues of non-compliance with service providers. Maintain a database of information on placements and give information to, and receive information from, workers across Children’s Services and other local authorities. Assist in identifying gaps in placement provision and contribute to the commissioning strategy for LAC & care leavers. Work within the equalities policy and ensure that the diverse needs of LAC are given due weight in placement recommendations / decisions. Qualifications: Educated to degree level or equivalent evidence of continuing professional development. Qualified and UK registered social worker desirable. Skills & Experience: Minimum of 12 months recent experience in a similar role or context and ideally within a public sector organisation. Must have recent placement finding experience within a local authority. Sound knowledge of Children’s Services either within a local authority setting or the private and voluntary sector. Sound knowledge of the market of Children’s care placements. Recent experience, ideally within a local authority, commissioning a range of placements for looked after children & care leavers (ages 0-25). Proven experience of managing a placement duty function on a day-to-day basis. Pursues creative and new ideas to provide solutions to complex problems i.e. able to commission emergency placements for children with challenging behaviours. In depth knowledge of childcare placement market and can show evidence of influencing key stakeholders externally and internally. Strong IT skills including Microsoft packages or equivalent (e.g. G Suite, Adobe Pro). Please quote the Job Title & Vacancy Reference No. in your application, or we will be unable to match your CV to the role being applied for. Unless the DBS requirement stated above is for a Basic Disclosure, your DBS must be either through us or be accompanied by a subscription to the DBS updating service. Please feel free to apply to us direct via jobstclrec.com by quoting the job reference and exact job title. To help speed up the process of uploading your CV to the client we would ask that you send us your CV in Word format (or equivalent) if possible, not as a PDF. If you are successful in securing this role, please note that for the entire duration of this contract, regardless of extension, you will be working at the PAYE rate that has been advertised. For absolute clarity, we only work on a PAYE basis, rather than umbrella pay terms. We do not offer Ltd/umbrella or outside IR35 rates. If you wish to understand PAYE vs Umbrella more, please let us know and we can send you some additional information for clarity. Due to the number of CVs being sent to us under current market conditions, unfortunately we cannot respond to all applications. If you have not heard from us within 3 working days, please assume that you have not been shortlisted on this occasion. We will, however, be very happy to receive future applications from you for other roles. S Please note that clients invariably ask us to strip out contact details from CVs before we submit them for consideration. This is always quicker and easier to do if you send your CV to us in Word format, rather than as a PDF please