Salary: Band 5, £25,652 to £27,363 per annum
Contract: Fixed term/secondment maternity cover for up to 1 year or sooner should the postholder return
Hours: Full time (37 hours per week)
Closing date: Sunday 8 December 2024, 23:59
Interviews week commencing Monday 16 December 2024
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. It is also committed to promoting quality childcare across the city that works to improve outcomes for children.
Every post is subject to PCC and Portsmouth Safeguarding Children Partnership safer recruitment procedures.
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.
It is a very busy and a challenging role, for someone who enjoys working as part of a team and wants to do a worthwhile job.
The post is situated at the Civic Offices, Guildhall Square, Portsmouth initially, potentially moving to hybrid later.
Your New Role:
You will provide high quality administrative business support within the Building and Supporting Your Futures Teams and the Child Safety and Asylum Team; you will support our Social Workers as they provide support to children in care. You will play a vital part in the Business Support Administrative functions to ensure the smooth running of business processes. This is a varied and busy role: you will take minutes of more complex meetings, deal with inquiries and correspondence in a confidential manner, book meetings, maintain files, and carry out a wide variety of administrative tasks. You will also support facilitating the unaccompanied minor's administration process and updating relevant systems in relation to government returns and related in-house processes and procedures. You will also arrange interpreters on behalf of the team. You will initially be fully office-based for training, moving to hybrid working later.
Please read the job profile for the full details of this role.
What you'll need to succeed:
You will have strong administrative skills with experience of working in an administrative/customer-focused role, and ideally also experience in Children and/or Young People's Services. Candidates with previous experience in local authorities or the NHS are encouraged to apply. You have a commitment to public service and want to make a meaningful contribution to the lives of children in care.
You will have excellent communication skills with a good awareness of Data Protection and Safeguarding Issues. You can demonstrate personal resilience and professionalism when exposed to explicit and emotionally challenging information, for example, in relation to child maltreatment and abuse. You can respond appropriately to enquiries from parents, carers, professionals and service users who may be anxious or emotional due to issues concerning the safeguarding and well-being of children. You have good attention to detail, can work flexibly as part of a team, and are customer-focussed.
Please read the job profile for the full details of this role.
What you'll get in return:
We really appreciate our employees and fully realise they are essential to our success and look to offer an inclusive, supportive working environment where employees can reach their potentials with a healthy work life balance, offering the following rewards:
- Generous annual leave (27 days per year rising to 31, pro rata for part time hours) with the potential to purchase additional leave.
- A fantastic pension which allows you the opportunity to pay in more for that greater return.
- Flexible working options including hybrid working with a minimum of two days office based per week pro rata, giving you the flexibility to work up to three days at home every week. Hybrid working is dependent on the role and service needs, exact details will be discussed with you at interview.
- Access to a wide range of training and development opportunities including apprenticeships.
- Extensive wellbeing support through the Employee Assistance Programme
- Discount on travel, travel loans and the bike loan scheme
- Discounts on a wide range of goods and services – access a range of discounts and offers from thousands of restaurants, shops and more.
Staff rewards: https://careers.portsmouth.gov.uk/working-for-the-council/
Additional Information:
The full job profile is attached here.
A commitment to our values:
We are committed to our values of respect, integrity, collaboration, inclusivity and being people-focussed. These values set out how we can contribute to the success of the council and our own success as individuals. Learn more about our values and behaviours.
Application process:
How to complete your application: https://careers.portsmouth.gov.uk/how-to-apply/
We are a disability confident employer - committed to ensuring that our recruitment and selection process is inclusive and accessible and welcome applications from all areas of society.
Please submit both a CV and a cover letter/personal statement. Remember to demonstrate in your cover letter/personal statement why you are suitable against each of the points described in the 'Who is the Person' section of the full Job Profile, using examples from your experience or transferable skills. This might be through qualifications or descriptive examples from your work / personal experience, which clearly illustrates what you did and the effect it had.
If you upload a CV without a cover letter/personal statement, it is unlikely that your application will be successful.
We will email applicants from time to time; please ensure you check e-mail folders as sometimes our e-mails may go into spam/junk folders.
We look forward to speaking with you soon.
Should you require any support in completing the application form please contact recruit@portsmouthcc.gov.uk.
