Job Roles Explained

Family Aide Worker

Can you describe what your job involves?
I work as Family Aide Worker at Farcliffe and Lilycroft Children and Family Centre and I really enjoy it!

Here at Farcliffe I work amongst so many different professionals such as
Community Resource Workers, Child Care Workers, Dieticians, Speech Therapists and Nursery Nurses. There is always plenty of support, advice and ideas for the team to share with each other. Due to the varied range of expertise and staff experiences at Farcliffe I also find it a fantastic opportunity to learn and am continuously picking somebody's brain!
I find the centre a welcoming and friendly place to work and diversity of my role means it is continually challenging and interesting for me.
My job involves me supporting children and families in need and identifying ways and agencies to benefit them further. I also make home visits to do workaround boundaries, routines, healthy eating and hygiene. My aim is to help and support children and families to stay safe and develop and enable them to get the best out of family life.

As a family aide worker I also run parenting groups and groups for children, to raise there self esteem and help with any behavioural difficulties. These can be held out in the local community, schools or here at the Children Centre.

Creating interesting and informative displays is also one of my duties and
brightens up the centre for our staff and the visitors who attend contact. Contact is an opportunity for looked after children to spend time with their families and as a family aide occasionally have to facilitate this too.

What are the benefits?
The job is really varied and extremely interesting. Although I have my given workload and boundaries and policies to adhere to, it is very flexible and I am responsible for my own workload and regularly work on my own initiative. I get a great deal of job satisfaction from my work with the families.

What are the Training and Development Opportunities?
I am encouraged to attend many interesting courses to benefit my work and I get regular supervision and support from my manager and my colleagues. Also, we can now access on line training. This is a more convenient way of learning as I can log on or off to fit it in and amongst work.

Community Resource Worker

Can you describe your job and what it involves?
I am a Community Resource Worker based at Farcliffe Family Centre. The centre is based in the Manningham area of Bradford. We offer a service to families who live in the BD7, BD8, BD9, BD14 and BD15 areas of Bradford.
My job involves working with families who have children up to the age of 11years, who are in need of support in various areas of parenting ie. Healthy Eating, Staying Safe, Education and Behaviour Management.
I support parents in their homes developing their parenting skills by undertaking an educative programme with them. By empowering parents they are able to make informed choices and therefore enables them to become self sufficient.

My role enables me to educate parents in a non-judgemental manner, and
establish a working relationship which is relevant to their needs.
Another part of my role within the family is to ensure that the rights and welfare of the children are met and protected.
I work closely with the area Social Workers to ensure that children are protected from abuse. This is undertaken by regular monitoring during home visits. I also supervise contact sessions when children have been removed from their parents care. Part of my role is to attend court to give evidence, providing written assessments and reports.

What are the benefits?
There are a lot of opportunities to develop my skills by attending external and inhouse training courses.
Also there is multi-agency working which enables me to work with Social Workers, Health Visitors, Hospitals, Police, Probation, Drug Agencies and Education. This ensures that information regarding each individual family is shared to enable the families to receive the support that they need.I also run groups to support parents in their parenting skills. I enjoy my job and get a lot of satisfaction as it provides me with the opportunity to support families in need and to contribute in protecting children. The job has many challenges and it allows me to develop my existing skills as well as enhance new ones.

What are the training and development opportunities?
I came to work at the centre after obtaining my N.N.E.B qualification. Following that I completed a Level 3 portfolio and more recently an NVQ Level 4 in Health and Social Care- Children & Young People. I am encouraged to attend relevant training courses.

What has kept you working for Bradford Social Services?
I enjoy my job very much and I am part of a very supportive team. The job is at times extremely stressful but with excellent supervision from my manager and colleagues I am able to provide a good service to the families that I work with.

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