Fostering Social Worker

Role: Fostering Social Worker  

Circa Salary: £38,050 per annum plus £700 on-call allowance

Contract/Hours: Permanent Full-time 37 hours per week.

Location: Hybrid - Exeter Devon, regular office attendance– homebased with travel across the South West. 

Benefits:

• 29 days annual leave plus bank holidays and options to buy or sell leave
• Flexible maternity, adoption, and paternity packages
• Pension with up to 7% matched employer contribution with included life assurance cover
• Blue Light Card eligibility with 15,000 national retailers discounts

• We are a Real Living Wage accredited employer

   

We are one of the largest children’s charities in the UK and have been making a difference to the lives of the UK’s vulnerable children for over 150 years. 

Find out more about Action for Children here: Action for Children and on LinkedIn, Facebook or YouTube to get to know us better.

About the Service

Action for Children Fostering Southwest Peninsula and Family Breaks Devon seek to meet the needs of the most vulnerable children and young people in society by the provision of safe, secure, and successful foster homes including short breaks for children with additional needs.

We also offer the highest standard of care - providing foster families with excellent training, supervision, and support to achieve the best outcomes for the young people we look after. We strive to provide a good quality of care to young people, always ensuring they are at the centre of our approach. We offer a therapeutic framework. Carers and staff have access to skilled psychologists with specialist knowledge of the needs of looked-after children.

About the role

We are looking for an outstanding Fostering Social Worker who can support carers from the Devon/Somerset borders to Cornwall - so flexibility to travel across this cluster as and when needed is imperative for this role. You will also have the opportunity to assess applicants to foster.

Participation in an out-of-hours telephone support service for carers is an expectation of this role.

How you’ll create brighter futures

• Providing professional supervision and developmental support, including advice and guidance to fostering families and working with other professionals where appropriate.
• Completing complex assessments of applicants to foster, making appropriate recommendations, to ensure the best outcome for children, young people, and families.
• Ensuring the voices of young people are heard and shape our services;
• Striving to ensure our services are inclusive and celebrate diversity;
• Supporting fostering families to look after children and young people who have experienced trauma, ensuring they have the skills and knowledge to enable them to undertake this complex task within a family home environment, undertaking fostering reviews, providing high quality, analytical reports and presenting to Panel where appropriate, ensuring that children are receiving the best service possible.
• Being accountable for ensuring statutory compliance and meet regulatory body requirements regarding registration.
• Enthusiasm for learning and self-development, for yourself as a reflective practitioner, and in support of our carer training.

Let’s talk about you

• A Social Work qualification is essential.
• Registration with Social Work England is essential.
• Preferable experience of assessing, supervising, and supporting foster carers; however, if you are new to fostering but have transferable skills or experience we will be interested to hear from you
• A strong commitment to work within our therapeutic framework to support the needs of the young person.
• The capacity to plan and prioritise and to keep effective written records
• To use electronic records system and IT effectively
• Access to transport to travel across the Southwest including some remote locations.
• The role will involve some flexible hours with occasional evening work.

Good to know

Interviews to be held week commencing 20^th October 2025

We are unable to offer sponsorship for this role

For more information about the role, please review our full job description by clicking here.

If, for any reason, you need support with your application, please contact Scott Jones at recruitmentservice@actionforchildren.org.uk quoting reference 12029 and we'll be happy to give you any support you require.

Diversity, equality, and inclusion

At Action for Children, we're dedicated to building a diverse, inclusive, and authentic workplace. We actively encourage applications from Black, Asian & Minority Ethnic, and disabled candidates as they are under-represented within Action for Children. We want to take deliberate and purposeful action to ensure equal opportunity to all groups in society and for Action for Children.

Male staff are under-represented within our Children Service roles. We would like to encourage more male applicants for our Children Service roles.

Useful Documents:

• Action for Children employee benefits
• AfC Commitment Statement