Business Support Officer

About the role
Adoption South East (ASE) is a regional adoption agency comprising Brighton and Hove, East Sussex, Surrey and West Sussex County Council.

The Keeping in Touch (KiT) team is a specialist service as part of ASE’s Adoption Support Hub who are responsible for supporting, facilitating and regularly reviewing an adopted child’s Keeping in Touch arrangements, to ensure they remain safe, manageable and are child focused. This may include Letterbox exchange (indirect), and/or Face-to-Face meetings (direct), depending on the child’s needs and circumstances.

In this role, you will be working in a hybrid way, supporting Adoption Support Workers, Senior Social Workers and Team Manager in Adoption South East. Some of your daily tasks will include receiving and tracking both hardcopy and electronic exchanges between our adoptive and first families. This role will require you to be able to scan important documentation, accurately input data into computerised departmental systems and databases, ensuring exchanges are reviewed by Adoption Support Workers. The role will require you to track these exchanges and ensure they are received, processed and sent out to the correct recipients and are processed in a timely manner in accordance with their exchange agreement. You will be required to process, retrieve, analyse and cleanse data as necessary. Confidentiality while processing and exchanging sensitive data is vital in this role.

By providing professional business and administrative support you will be making a difference to the work of Adoption South East and enhancing the effectiveness of the whole team.

This position requires occasional travel across the region for meetings.

More detailed descriptions and information can be found in the Job Description attached.

Experience and Skills

Just a few key skills you will need include:

• Work independently, confidently, flexibly and in close partnership with others in the Keeping in Touch team and the wider organisation.
• Good time management to manage short deadlines and conflicting priorities.
• Excellent Word and Excel skills, and the ability to concentrate over long periods of time to take and record accurate and comprehensive notes during meetings and communications with clients on complex and sensitive subjects.
• Resilience and excellent interpersonal skills when dealing with vulnerable individuals or those with complex problems, and occasional challenging behaviours from those accessing the service.
• Handle information with sensitivity and confidentiality.
• GCSE English and Maths, or equivalent qualification or experience operating at this level of literacy and numeracy.
• Relevant training and development undertaken during current or recent employment and of a commitment to continuing personal development.

Contract type: This role is Permanent

Interviews to be held: tbc.

There is full information about the role below and attached but, if you would like an informal discussion, please contact Vicky Mahir, Business Support Lead at vicky.mahir@eastsussex.gov.uk

Encouraging a diverse workforce
Our city is known and loved for its diversity. Not only is the mixture of people, culture and skills vital to the economic and social development of the city, it's what makes Brighton & Hove such a great place to live, work and visit. We are committed to developing and retaining a workforce that is representative of the diverse communities we serve so we welcome applications from individuals from all backgrounds. In order to achieve our aims of proportionate representation, we particularly encourage applicants from a BME or White Other background as well as those who identify as disabled, male or trans.

Find out more about our commitment to being a fair and inclusive place to work where everyone can achieve their potential by reading about our fair and inclusive actions, our anti-racism strategy and the work we are doing to encourage a diverse workforce (brighton-hove.gov.uk).

Why work for us?
As a council, we want to:
• be connected
• be confident
• be innovative and creative
• be diverse and inclusive
• be healthy and psychologically safe
For more information about our values and the benefits of working at the council, visit Why work for us which gives details of our wellbeing support, our benefits including leave and pensions as well as details of our training and development.

How to apply
Please read our Apply for a job at the council pages carefully. They give you all the guidance you need to complete your application as well as information on what will happen after you’ve submitted your application and at interview.

As part of your application, you will need to provide your education and career history and answer some application/shortlisting questions. Your answers to the application/shortlisting questions are the most important part of your application as they will be used in the shortlisting process to assess whether you meet the essential requirements for the role that are set out in the person specification and to decide whether you should be offered an interview. Before you start your application, please read our Shortlisting questions guidance (brighton-hove.gov.uk) as this gives important advice which will increase your chance of success in the shortlisting process.

AI advice for candidates
We are interested in hearing about your experience and skills in your own words. While we value people who know how to use AI, we ask that you minimise using it in your application.

We are keen to hear how your experience and skills align to our values and the skills and experience needed to perform well in our roles with clear real examples from you. To support you in this, we have guidance on using the STAR model which can help you ensure you are telling us your whole story. We also provide clarity on the skills we are looking for in our adverts and in the job description/person specification attached to each job advert.

All the applications we receive are read by at least two hiring managers and we do not use AI in this process. Our experience of reading applications is that those that have heavily used AI contain generic paragraphs that are strikingly similar to other applicants’ responses. This makes it extremely difficult to differentiate between applications, and doesn't give us enough evidence of your individual skills. There is a risk that we will therefore not be able to shortlist you. Instead, we recommend you ensure your application stands out by presenting clear examples of your actual skills and experiences in your own words.

Additional information
Your starting salary will be pro rata if the above position is less than 37 hours or term-time only.

DBS statement options:

Enhanced DBS

Please note that this post is exempt from the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974, and is subject to a Disclosure & Barring Service (DBS) Check.

We are a workplace that supports flexibility and employee wellbeing in the way we work whilst providing the best service for our customers. Team and service working arrangements are designed to support both employee work life balance and team collaboration. These would be part of your individual working arrangements alongside any personal preference agreed with your manager in advance of joining. Your contractual location will be the designated council office for your team and travel to and from your contractual location would be at your own expense.

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