Children's Support Worker

This charity works with offenders, prisoners and families. The purpose of their prison-based Family Support provision is to develop a range of support services for children visiting the prison to encourage increased contact, to facilitate visits, to mediate for the children, to provide signposting support to mothers and carers and to arrange parenting skills courses. This is achieved through developing play activities for the children to participate in during visits; acting as a point of contact before and after visits; liaising and negotiating with Prison and Probation staff, internal and external agencies, schools etc.

The Children's Support Worker will be key in developing and delivering these activities. The post will work within the Trust's Community Engagement team at HMP Lincoln and will have autonomy in how he/she operates, however the boundaries of the prison and the criminal justice system will obviously need to be adhered to. The post holder will need to deal with high levels of emotion and conflicts / conflict resolution, therefore it is important that an objective but sensitive and professional approach can be adopted.

Visits currently run every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday afternoon, as well as Saturday and Sunday morning and afternoon. Casework will be undertaken outside of visit times. This post is full time, although they would welcome applications for part time working. Some weekend working will be required as part of a rota.

They are looking for someone who is energetic, motivated and innovative, and who loves working with children! This post will provide an opportunity for applying previous experience in a non-traditional setting.

The post is based at the FIRST Centre at HMP Lincoln. HMP Lincoln is a closed local adult male prison with an operational capacity of approximately 738 sentenced and remand prisoners.

It is subject to Enhanced DBS disclosure and security clearances.