Specialist Services
The Fostering Team
Our Fostering Service aims to provide good quality foster care to children and young people who, for a variety of reasons, are unable to live at home with their families.
The work of the Fostering Service Team involves recruiting, training and assessing the suitability of applicants to become foster carers and offers support and ongoing training on a regular basis.
Social Workers who work in the Fostering Service support foster carers in meetings regarding the looked after children in their care. There are a number of different types of foster carers responding to the particular needs of individual children - these include children with disabilities and those children who display challenging behaviour. Regular supervision and support is offered to social workers with appropriate training to assist workers in their professional development.
The Adoption Team
The members of this group visit and assess prospective adopters until a suitable match is made with a child. Adopters are supported after placement with regular visits and attendance in court until the Adoption Order is made.
The support team provide a range of services that help adopters in their life long task of adoption. This includes therapeutic work, financial support, direct contact service, support groups, activity days, newsletters, Buddying Schemes and training.
The Adoption Service has a dedicated and experienced staff group who are committed to providing high quality and well supported adoptive placements.
The Recruitment Team
This team advertises the need for adopters via a number of media and information evenings. Members of this group make initial visits to prospective adopters, detail the needs of adopters, process and gather basic information to judge suitability of adopters, and arrange reference checks.
The Looked After Children's Service
The overall aim of the LAC Service is to provide a statutory social work service for children and young people where there is an adoption plan, or there are no plans to return them to their birth parents, or a young person under the age of 18 years old who is claiming asylum.
The Looked After Children's Service moved into its refurbished accommodation in June 2008. The team covers the entire city but is located in the North East. At present, the team compromises 3 Team Managers, 4 Senior Practitioner, 22 Social Workers, 3.5 Children and Families Workers, and admin support.
Some specialist workers in the Team undertake primarily adoption work and others work with unaccompanied asylum seeking young people.
The Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children's Team is a referral point so will receive direct referrals from the Police, the Refugee Centre and other agencies. The main part of the LAC service is not a referral point so cases are transferred from Neighbourhood Teams or the Referral and Assessment Service when it becomes clear that the looked after child will not be returning to their birth family.
At present, there are over 600 children and young people in the Care of the City Council. A significant number of young people are placed outside of the city boundary for various reasons so travel to these placements is part of the role. Recent figures indicate that 58% of looked after children are placed within the city area with 12.8% living more than 20 miles away from the city.
If you are interested in working for this Service then please submit your CV. We are looking for enthusiastic staff who are committed to improving the lives of young people. There is a significant level of joint working so you will be involved in the planning and implementation of services with other professionals in order to improve the life chances of these young people. You must be committed to working closely with the young people and their birth families in order to make partnership working a reality.
You will receive induction and regular supervision from one of the three experienced Team Managers, and an annual Performance Development Review. Coventry has an extensive training plan and social workers are actively encouraged to undertake formal Post Qualifying training. Coventry has also developed a career progression programme that incorporates protected case loads for newly qualified staff and the potential to progress to Senior Practitioner.
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