Education Casework Officer

Warwickshire Attendance Service: Education Casework Officer

We are seeking to recruit additional Education Casework Officers on a permanent contract.

Reporting to the Team Lead - Attendance Service, you will be working within an established team. All aspects of the role of Education Casework Officer are undertaken in line with national guidance ‘Working together to improve school attendance ‘May 2022’.

You will be working collaboratively with multi-agency teams and services, facilitating attendance focused support, advice, and guidance to schools to improve outcomes for children and young people. Support the improvement in attendance is a key driver in working together to improve school attendance.

Where appropriate, you will also contribute to a range of more focussed formalised support including parenting contracts, parenting orders and education supervision orders. As a last resort, you may be required to undertake prosecution on behalf of the local authority.

About the role

Your role will be to deliver the four core local authority functions from ‘Working Together to Improve School Attendance’ (2022) which includes Targeting Support Meetings, communication and advice, multi-disciplinary support for families and legal intervention. Working as part of a team there will be on-going training, support and supervision provided to you.

Delivering across a defined locality area and acting as a single point of contact, you will work collaboratively with your allocated maintained, academy, independent schools and a variety of other settings. You will identify children who are persistently or severely absent and agree appropriate actions to support to remove their barriers to attendance. This will include working directly with various agencies to support working with children, young people, and their families.

You will also be required to provide schools with advice and guidance in relation to whole school attendance strategies, staged approaches to improved attendance, coding, policy, systems, and processes.

Where there is a lack of parental engagement, you will contribute to parenting contracts, oversee parenting orders and education supervision orders. This will involve managing a caseload, completing assessments, keeping electronic case records, working to tight deadlines, producing evidence and reports which are of a high quality, up- to- date and accurate.

As a last resort, appropriate cases will require you to use formal processes of escalation and enforcement.

We are seeking someone who has experience of direct work supporting children and families within a social care setting or a multi-agency setting for example police, housing or school. You may have experience delivering strategies and interventions to address barriers to attendance or with training and support have transferrable skills to enable you to undertake all aspects of the role of an Education Casework Officer. We would be keen to hear from you if you have experience of working with children and young people who have experience of mental health, SEND, or childhood experience of trauma.

Although we have three area bases – North (Bedworth), South (Warwick) and East (Rugby), we work in line the WCC agile working and a large part of the role is independent working. The successful applicant will be delivering support to schools across a designated locality area, therefore you must be prepared and able to travel.

For the full Job Description and Person Specification please click the link here.

Additional Information

Warwickshire County Council are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people and adults and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment. This post is subject to an enhanced DBS disclosure.

Contact Details:

For any further information or if you wish to have a discussion regarding the role then please contact Nici Scott-Moylan, Team Lead – Attendance Service.

Tel: 01926 413777

Email: was@warwickshire.gov.uk

Closing Date: Tuesday 2nd May

To apply for this vacancy please click on the 'Apply' button.

Our method of application is online, please note, CV’s should not been submitted unless asked to do so.

If you are unable to apply using the 'Apply' button please contact the Recruitment Centre on hrandpayroll@warwickshire.gov.uk including your contact details and any relevant screenshots.

You will be notified of our shortlisting decision via email, so please check your email on a regular basis after submitting your application.

As part of being a Disability Confident employer we guarantee to interview anyone with a disability whose application meets the minimum criteria for the post. By ‘minimum criteria’ we mean that you must provide us with evidence in your application form which demonstrates that you generally meet the level of competence required for each competence, as well as meeting any of the qualifications, skills or experience defined as essential in the person specification.

Should you require application forms in an alternative format / language or any adjustments to be made throughout the application process or upon appointment, please contact hrandpayroll@warwickshire.gov.uk and we will make every effort to meet your specific requirements.

Warwickshire County Council (WCC) is committed to equality of opportunity for all employees and is keen to address areas of under representation in its workforce, this is because we really understand the importance of different voices, experiences, perspectives, and backgrounds within our workforce. Therefore, we strongly encourage applications from members of underrepresented groups. WCC has a number of staff network groups which provide peer support and safe spaces for employees who hold these and other identities. See more.