Children's Case Manager

To provide highly effective, sensitive, and child focused case management for children, young people and families who are disadvantaged because of social, emotional and mental health needs (SEMH). Working closely with our other Case Manager, the role-holder will facilitate and manage the delivery of our wellbeing and education services ensuring they meet the organisations' need to create meaningful long term impact for improved mental health, reduced social isolation and ability to thrive in education and solidify our not for profit growing reputation for outstanding impact. The role will involve liaising with organisational stakeholders such as our panel of mental health practitioners and educators, social workers, SEND departments, schools staff and other professionals and close and meaningful contact with clients including children, parent/ carers and other referral organisations.
A bit about Leading Lights Education and Wellbeing
We want to bring love to children's services. We work with children and young people at both primary and secondary school age who are disadvantaged because of social, emotional, and mental health (SEMH) difficulties. They often have a diagnosed mental health condition or are waiting for a diagnosis, and it is often correlated with a history of trauma or psychological distress, or another disability, learning need, or physical illness. Many of the children we work with are also affected by issues such as domestic violence, abuse, identity issues, bullying and many are young carers. Whilst each child is affected differently, common issues that we see are: Problems accessing school either through non-attendance, or difficulty focusing and thriving at school, difficulties making friends leading to significant social isolation, issues with confidence and self-esteem which can lead to difficulties leaving the house or even their rooms for days at a time, suicidal attempts or ideation, self-harm, difficulties accessing support and help from statutory services, and panic attacks. Such disadvantage has long-term impact on outcomes in education, mental health, health and employment. We want to make three key differences: 1. Improved mental health. 2. Reduced social isolation 3. Increased ability to thrive at school. In order to meet increasing demand, we are about to launch our first specialist SEMH Education and Wellbeing Hub in central Bristol, which will provide a new and beautifully tailored range of education and wellbeing programmes, as well as a community caf??. This is something we have been patiently working towards for a long time and marks a transition point as we start to accelerate our growth, sustainability and most importantly our social impact and reach. We expect these programmes to become the benchmark of best practice in specialist wellbeing and education programmes for children affected by SEMH. Because of Covid, we are currently running some of these services online and as telephone and texting services to meet our children's needs. We also run outreach services in Bristol and South West and in London too which are primarily funded by social care and SEND departments and can be education, mentoring, and blended impact programmes specialising in complex case work for children who often have significant SEND and mental health needs. We also run grant and self funded mentoring and education programmes as outreach programmes too and are consistently examining what is most needed by our children and working responsively and reflexively to need.
We are a small and warm team, we work very hard and make lots of tea. We don't worry if people are 5 minutes late and want to come to work in fancy dress/ their pyjamas/ normal clothes but we do worry if people don't show genuine empathy and passion for what they do and achieve outcomes as it's not fair on the rest of the team and most importantly our children. We will reward efforts and impact with opportunities to grow and develop and we are open to flexible working around child care/ home working options, as long as it can still ensure enough team contact time, and meet children and project needs.
Roles and Responsibilities
This list is indicative of the type of work required of the post holder and not meant to be exhaustive.

• Undertake all duties with an authentic approach of love, empathy and care
• To manage relationships with children, professionals, families and practitioners dealing with cases from referral onwards, by phone, face to face and by email, and to be in proactive and sensitive communication including with professionals and vulnerable children and families. This will often include matters of confidentiality and sensitivity and will require empathy, tact, and diplomacy to resolve.
• Strategic problem solving being able to think about what issues might come up, what lies behind the words, and what needs to be done to reassure, and move things forward successfully.
• Confidence dealing with conflict and disagreements, ensuring that the children and families voices are heard and working positively with our partners
• Personalised and holistic case management including initiation, planning, execution, monitoring/control and closure across children's cases.
• Proactive commitment to safeguarding best practise and information sharing including commitment to Leading Lights safeguarding procedure and effective escalation and follow up as required
• Undertake effective risk-management for individual families on a case by case basis and in liaison with team and social care and other stakeholders
• Management of practitioner and other recruitment administration including organisation of assessment dates, managing central database, ensuring HR compliance with best practice for safer working with children
• Assistance and delivery of assessment days and training as required. This may require some travel, which will be agreed on beforehand
• Take responsibility for aspects of administrative support for our education and wellbeing services, ensuring that services are efficient, effective and adapt to changing circumstances
• Development of common systems and processes standardised towards best practice and ensuring procedures are adhered to as well as looking to improve them wherever possible
• Financial administration to include simple bookkeeping, management of invoicing and billing cycles as well as producing up-to-date financial reports using our systems
• Engagement with wellbeing programmes both at our specialist mental health hub and in our outreach programmes
• Demonstrate understanding and commitment to measuring and improving participation from our more vulnerable stakeholders and measuring and looking to always improve social impact outcomes.
• Additional tasks and responsibilities as required by the organisation

The projects that the Case Manager will mostly be working on will be our outreach services which are primarily delivered and funded by local authorities - social services and SEND departments and the case manager will be responsible and accountable for meeting targets, organising placements, ensuring quality assurance and planning for all deliverables and outcomes, undertaking necessary supporting administration and providing professional and expert input across stakeholders, able to represent themselves and the organisation as children mental health experts and offer sensitive and child focused suggestions on how to deliver against EHCP and social care goals and needs. They will be expected not only to deliver projects which have meaningful long term impact for the children, but always to be proactively seeking to do more and to make them better. The case manager will collate and analyse a range of systems and data (quantitative and qualitative) with a view to improvement in communications, systems and processes and will make these improvements happen in their own case work as well as supporting colleagues as pertinent. Able to communicate effectively face to face and in written and verbal communications with a range and diverse range of stakeholders, they will be a core part of the LL team and able to ensure exceptional outcomes and growth of service, taking responsibility for holistic case management and undertaking other administration duties including finance and HR as it relates to their case work, and practitioner team. As a small industrious team, we do expect people to be willing to help out in other areas of the organisation as needed.

• A strong interest in education, mental health, families and young people
• At least 4 years experience of working in the children and family/education sector
• Experience in working with children and young people and families affected by SEMH and SEND and ability to demonstrate your expertise and knowledge in these areas to high standard
• Experience of being involved in the design and delivery of high quality mental health projects.
• The ability to learn fast, be proactive and to respond constructively to feedback.
• A proven record of building strong and effective relationships with team and children and families alike
• Strong attention to detail and be able to consistently demonstrate this across communications
• Be able to demonstrate empathy, diplomacy and thoughtfulness in all your communications: verbal and written.
• Ambition and a capacity for hard work and a 'can do' attitude.
• A strong belief in and commitment to our values including understanding that its about being accountable for having a positive and measurable impact
• An absolute commitment to safeguarding best practice and a willingness to keep learning and reflecting on this
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