Family Time Practitioner

Family Time Practitioner

Job description

Full Time / 37 Hours Per Week / Fixed Term until March 2027

Potential extensions to post to considered nearer the time.

Are you a dedicated, energetic, and empathetic? We are looking for a Family Time Practitioner to predominantly supervise family time between children in care and their parents/carers and undertake parenting assessments within the family time, amongst other duties.

Families Together provides a flexible & quality service for children in care, their parents, carers, and Social Workers. We ensure safe family time between families and their children as well as educate parents to be able to provide the right care for their children, so that they can remain in their care or be returned to their care.

We’re currently recruiting for one full time (37 hours) position for the role of Family Time Practitioner to be based within either of our two buildings however, you may be required to work across the city to attend meetings in relation to families, visit families in their homes and travel out of the county. You'll need to be flexible and willing to work on a rota basis between the hours of 7.30am to 6.30pm Monday to Thursday and 7:30-5:30pm on Fridays.

The team consists of 17.5 fulltime Family time practitioners, 2.5 admin operatives, one commissionaire and two-house keepers, there are 6 assistant managers and a Team Manager.

We are a large team who are united, we share the same vision as to why we are here, the child’s voice is paramount as is our drive to keep all children safe from harm.

Our aim is to provide a safe environment for all children, where fun, creativity and laughter can be heard and seen, where our dedicated staff team use their shared skills so that “family time” is a time that everyone enjoys.

What you’ll be doing

As a Family Time Practitioner, you’ll supervise, monitor, assess and evaluate family time between children, parents, and other family members, which form part of wider assessment processes e.g. for Social Workers and the courts. You’ll develop positive and sensitive relationships with children and their families, providing them with support, training, and advice on parenting skills within agreed programmes of work, including parent’s groups and work with them on a one-to-one basis. Using your excellent IT skills, you’ll maintain accurate written records of family time sessions, parenting assessments, as well as produce reports on a regular basis.

As a Family Time Practitioner, you’ll work closely with colleagues within Families Together, Social Workers, and other professionals to ensure that the Council’s statutory child protection/safeguarding duties are fulfilled.

Families Together is a fast-changing environment, and you will be expected to switch and change from one task to another, depending on the circumstances at the time, there will be changes in your daily duties, which can happen on a regular basis and being able to adapt is a crucial element of the role.

You'll share tasks of chairing team meetings, peer groups and reading out your reports within review settings, this will enable you to show and develop your confidence and manage group settlings when needed.

What you’ll need

As the successful candidate you’ll need previous work experience working with children under the age of 8 years of age. You’ll also have experience of working children and families from a variety of backgrounds. You’ll need knowledge in child development and how parenting impacts on child development as well as hold an NNEB certificate, NVQ Level 3 or BTEC Diploma in caring studies or equivalent. With your ability to communicate in both formal and informal settings, you’ll be able to effectively facilitate family time between children and their families, and deal with people professionally at all levels, you will be able to defuse situations, always challenge undesired behaviour and safeguard. With your ability and knowledge around a PC including IT systems, you will find it easy navigating your way around the different programmes and forms that need to be used during your working day, this will also help you to be able to put together forms and processes that are needed when completing court reports for the families.

Due to having your own car, you will be able to transport children to family time and different venues, which enables the child to build that familiarisation with yourself and prevents them from being in family time with lots of different individuals. To be able to do this safely you will need your own car, a clean full driving licence and the right business insurance that includes carrying people/children.

Due to the complexities of our parents, you will need to have great communication skills, pick up on nonverbal communication as well as verbal communication and have the confidence to challenge when needed and knowing when that’s safe to do so.

What we can offer you​

As well as the satisfaction of helping to improve thousands of lives across Leicester, you can look forward to a work environment that encourages a healthy work/life balance. You’ll enjoy generous annual leave, membership of the Local Government Pension Scheme. We’ll also give you the chance to develop your skills and expertise with a variety of training and development opportunities. In addition, you can choose from several flexible benefits, including childcare vouchers, discounts on city buses and trains and help with relocation to Leicester, where appropriate. For an illustrative value of your benefits package, take a look at our benefits calculator.​

Join us​

We’re committed to recruiting a diverse and highly talented workforce as we continue to build a council that is fitting and representative of our great city. That’s why we’ve designed our recruitment process to put you at your ease, make you feel welcome and bring the best out of you. We’ll do all we can to make our recruitment process as fair as possible. To help you with your application, take a look at the ‘our approach to recruitment’ page.​

For an informal discussion, or further information regarding this job please contact Catherine Liquorish by email catherine.liquorish@leicester.gov.uk or call 0116 454 0076.

Interviews will take place WC 12th of October 2026.