Business Support Officer (Family Safeguarding)

Children’s Services places the interests of children firmly at the centre of everything we do, working with families to offer advice, support and guidance; build children's confidence, self-esteem and prepare them for life ahead. Family Safeguarding is a strengths-based, whole-family approach to child protection. It brings together all professionals working with a family in one team including children’s social workers, mental health, substance misuse and domestic abuse specialists.

We are looking for a Business Support Officer to join our Family Safeguarding teams, providing admin support to the front-line teams based at 3 Knowsley Place, Bury working 2 days per week, working Thursdays and Friday as part of a job share arrangement.

A typical day might include:

• Answering phone calls from colleagues, service users or other professionals. Some calls we can answer and help with ourselves, others may need signposting elsewhere.
• Management of shared team inboxes all requests for support from our teams come to this inbox, so it is essential that it is monitored constantly, and urgent tasks are dealt with quickly.
• Support to key meetings attended by social care practitioners, family members and legal representatives. These meetings must be recorded accurately as they are part of the legal process that can lead to change for the children and families in our care.
• Handling of petty cash to support practitioners and families end ensuring compliance with financial procedures
• Supporting contact between families for example by booking accommodation or transport (taxi/train).
• One of this role’s key tasks is as a meeting facilitator for case supervisions. These meetings are held to oversee the management of the cases our teams are working and are a critical part of the Family Safeguarding model. Business Officers are an integral part of this process and hold several specific tasks. These include managing the team diaries and organising monthly supervision meetings dependent on size of caseload and complexity of cases; understanding the pressures of the team to ensure the meetings are held at the most appropriate time; minuting the meetings directly onto our bespoke case management system and ensuring all follow up tasks are completed.

About you:

You will need a good working knowledge of Office (including Word, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint). You should be self-motivated and have excellent organisational skills alongside the ability to manage your own workload, prioritise and forward plan. You will be adaptable and flexible, have transferable skills and a willingness to learn new systems and new ways of doing things.

You will work as part of a busy team so must possess good interpersonal and communication skills. You will need to work on your own initiative, keep calm under pressure and be able to work to tight deadlines. You should have a methodical and concise approach to tasks and the ability to prioritise workloads effectively.

We are looking for team players with enthusiasm and a ‘can do, will do’ attitude to continually provide and improve the service to our families.