Business Support Officer - Adoption Children''s Services x 2

About UsAt Hounslow we’d love you to join us at the London Borough of Hounslow! Our people are deeply committed to providing excellent services to our residents, doing all we can to make lives as good as they can be.

We are an outstanding council, serving an outstanding borough. With brilliant, visionary leadership, a dynamic Cabinet and a can-do culture, we’ve built strong partnerships which have transformed how we serve one of London’s most diverse boroughs. Hounslow is the world in one place and full of potential. We are stepping up for our residents like never before.

Our Commitment To Diversity And InclusionWe live by five core values: Lead with Heart, Do New, Pass on the Power, Harness the Mix and Be a Rock. All our work has equality, diversity and inclusion at its very heart, best articulated in “Harness the Mix”. It’s about breaking down barriers between our parts and people and unlocking the problem-solving power of our amazing mix of minds. We serve a diverse community, we have a diverse workforce and we are committed to being an inclusive employer.

We work hard to create representation across our workforce and leadership community, we have thriving employee network groups and our learning and development programmes help us lead, model and breathe ways of working that eliminate inequality, inequity, injustice and bias.

As part of this and under our commitments as a Disability Confident Employer, we make reasonable adjustments to accommodate our candidates. There’s space for you to tell us what you need within our application form.

Our BenefitsAbout The RoleThis is an exciting opportunity to be a Business Support Officer for Hounslow’s Kinship and Adoption Service.

Although our adoption placements are organised and administered through our partners in Ealing, Hounslow’s Adoption Service focuses on keeping track of children placed in borough with adopters, providing checks for other boroughs on potential adopters. A Special Guardian is someone with a close relationship to the child, such as a family member, former foster carer or family friend. Special guardians have parental responsibility for the child until they are 18 years old and the child lives with them permanently.

We have two Business Support Officer Roles available.

Your role as Business Support Officer would be to work with the Social Worker and other local agencies to organise and set up the administration for all Special Guardianship placements. This includes first sending out the application pack to applicants. Then for example, following up with out of borough checks, employer checks, school checks, referee checks, receipt of medicals, then sending this to the medical advisor, and receiving the medical advice. Sharing all of the above with the assessing social worker and tracking all dates and alerting the assessing social worker and management of any delay. Uploading all relevant checks onto LCS. Maintaining an excellent database to record progress of all checks.

About The Team You’ll Be Working InOur Adoption and Kinship service is part of our Children’s Social Care division. We work very closely with fostering and our main aim is to protect and enhance the lives of the children in Hounslow. We help families find long-term solutions for when fostering is not an option. Our aim is to ensure children lead happy, healthy and successful lives.

The service is made up of mainly social workers. The Business Support role will be to work closely with the social workers to organise the administration to set up the Special Guardianship arrangements on behalf of families.

The Business Support activities would therefore include the following –

Sending Out Application Packs to families seeking to be special Guardians for family members, this includes the assembly, the dispatch and tracking of all information.

Processing Returned Packs including making contact with GPs and other local authorities, schools and nurseries, referees and employers and updating check information electronically.

Carrying Out Local Authority Checks for other Boroughs and Adoption Agencies on their Adoption Applicants, SGO Applicants and Kinship Applicants

Providing a responsive, professional and helpful customer care service over the telephone. Dealing confidently and constructively with enquiries in an articulate and helpful manner over email and face to face to residents, organisations and other professionals ensuring where possible that their needs are met, priority need is identified and signposted correctly.

Data cleansing and looking up information on customer data systems, uploading information, placing notifications and creating contacts as required to alert staff of updates or changes, bringing safeguarding issues to the attention of the worker or manager.

Liaise with managers and staff in the planning and arranging of meetings, including identifying what the meeting is for, establishing suitable dates, booking the room, sending out invitations, booking speakers and interpreters, collating and forwarding apologies, rearranging cancelled dates, updating staff calendars, and organising refreshments and relevant IT equipment. Where required pulling agendas together and taking notes of those meetings.

To be part of a Business Support Duty Rota – working from the office a minimum of twice a month and when required to support BSOs and Social Work colleagues. Duties include – regularly liaison with colleagues, the handing out and logging of prepayment cards and pool car keys, collection, scanning and distribution of post or other paperwork.

To administer the monthly Fostering and Adoption Panel requirements to support the approval of foster carers and placements. This includes not only the admin support through panel note taking but also the setting up of these meetings, ensuring the panel is in place, the paperwork bundles are put together and distributed and the Chair has all that is needed to steer the meeting to lead to ADM decision making.

To administer the weekly Permanency Planning Meetings inc their set up and administration.

About You

Are you a great team player, love lots of interaction with staff and residents and love being at the heart of social work activity?

We need a self-motivated, hard-working, professional person with a great team ethos who is interested in supporting the wellbeing of children, young people and their families.

Flexibility is crucial along with a willingness to work with other Business Support Officers across Children’s Services. Tasks are varied from organising spreadsheets, to uploading, processing and distributing information, being part of an office rota that comes into the office twice a week and making sure that calls that come through are dealt with professionally with excellent customer care.

You will need to be an excellent communicator as well as organised to ensure the smooth running of office systems. You should be able to demonstrate a selection of IT skills to maintain our database, produce correspondence and preferably have a background in administration and working closely and positively within a team environment.

Basic DBS Check is required.

If you like the sound of this job, we’d love you to put in an application:

Read more about the work you’ll be doing in the Role Profile.

Don’t meet every single requirement?

We know that sometimes people can be put off applying for a job if they think they can’t tick every box. At Hounslow, we realise the ‘perfect candidate’ doesn’t exist. So, if you can do most of what we’re looking for, go ahead and apply. You may be just the right candidate for the job or be perfect for one of our other roles!

When Interviews Will Be Held And Who To Contact

The key information you need about the role should be in the role profile, but if you have any further questions about the role, please contact:

Email: Heidi.Shearn@hounslow.gov.uk

Telephone: 020 8583 3112

Interviews for this job will be held during week commencing 14th October ..... full job details .....