Become part of a team which shares your passion
Thank you for your interest in working with us. Whether you’re an experienced practitioner, a newly qualified social worker, or you’re looking for a support services role, you’ll be able to develop your career in a great working environment with us in Reading.
Please note, we guarantee all Reading care leavers an interview if they meet the basic selection criteria for a vacancy. Please let us know as part of your application.
Apart from our executive roles, our vacancies are advertised on Jobs Go Public and on Total Jobs. The recruitment process is handled for us by our parent company, Reading Borough Council.
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Current Vacancies
Full time, permanent
Salary: £36,648 – £41,418 pa (Plus £8,000 Annual Market Supplement)
Job reference: BFC0638
We currently have vacancies for case-holding, experienced social workers. We believe that relationship-based social work makes a difference in children, young people and families’ lives and our generic teams focus on direct work with children, young people and families.
Our Together for Families (TfF) service is an exciting development for Brighter Futures for Children and has been introduced to allow children and families to benefit from the continuity of only one social worker. The benefit for social workers is lower caseloads and an environment that makes relationship-based social work flourish.
Our Together for Families teams work with children during S.17 (Children Act, 1989) single assessments, S.47 child protection investigations, as well as working with children subject to Child In Need Plans, Child Protection Plans, pre-proceedings, proceedings and those becoming looked after.
For more information and a confidential discussion, please contact recruitment@brighterfuturesforchildren.org
Independent Fostering Agency
(Duty, Data & Carer Training & Payments)
Full time, Permanent post
Salary: £47,418 – £53,420 (includes £6,000 annual market supplement)
Closing date: 27 October 2024
Interview date: 7 November 2024
Job reference: BFC0782
Our BFfC IFA is responsible for providing mainstream fostering services for BFfC, including the recruitment and retention of foster carers able to provide a range of placements for BFfC CLA. This is an exciting opportunity join our IFA service at a time when we are invested in expanding and improving the service in order to enable us to significantly expand our in-house fostering resource.
As part of this expansion, we are part of Local Authority Fostering Southeast and are working closely with the other local authorities that are within our sub-cluster (Oxfordshire, West Berkshire, Wokingham, Bracknell Forest, Slough, Windsor & Maidenhead, Kingston, and Richmond) on developing our shared central foster carer recruitment hub, and harmonising and joining up on aspects of carer recruitment and retention. We are also working with Fostering Network around establishing our first foster carer support hub, based on the Fostering Network Mockingbird Family Model.
For more information and a confidential discussion, please contact: Steffi Roth – IFA Registered Manager, on: Steffi.roth@brighterfuturesforchildren.org or Hilary Loades – IFA Responsible Individual, on: loades-bannon@brighterfuturesforchildren.org
We look forward to hearing from you!
Leaving Care Team
Part time, 18.5 hours per week
12 month Fixed term post
Salary: £44,648 – £49,418 pa (includes £8,000 Annual Market Supplement)
Closing date: 20 October 2024
Interview date: To be confirmed
Are you passionate about children? Do you have the desire to improve and provide quality services for our children?
If yes, then come join Brighter Futures for Children on our improvement journey.
We currently have a vacancy for qualified social workers in our Leaving Care Team.
For more information and a confidential discussion please contact Kayon.Morris-Johnson@brighterfuturesforchildren.org
We look forward to hearing from you!
The Lodge Day Nursery
Salary: £41,418 – £47,420 per annum
Full-time, Permanent post
Closing date: 3 November 2024
Interview date: 13 November 2024
Job reference: BFC0784
The Lodge Day Nursery is a busy, popular and well-established nursery providing high quality, affordable and funded childcare to local families in the west of Reading. The nursery is set out over three rooms which connect to a private garden space. Our local community is diverse with children attending our setting from a range of different backgrounds and with many different languages represented. Our practitioners are completely focused on ensuring that all children achieve and have an equal chance of success in an environment which is inclusive, inspiring and nurturing.
The children are very important and so is our team. We work closely with our practitioners to ensure that they continue to learn, develop and share good practices.
We are currently looking for a Nursery manager who can provide professional leadership and management of the nursery to ensure a high quality, inclusive, sustainable service where parents, partners and the team are ambitious for the children and completely focused on their wellbeing and success.
The nursery manager is responsible for ensuring that all areas of the provision comply with legal requirements surrounding health and safety and Ofsted.
For further information please contact: Becky Bateman, Under 5’s service manager at Rebecca.bateman@brighterfuturesforchildren.org
We look forward to hearing from you!
Casual post
Pay: £12.18 per hour
Closing date: 27 October 2024
Interview date: 5 November 2024
Job reference: BFC0873
The staff team support the young people to enable them to lead as full a life as possible. Our aim is to empower young people to achieve and develop skills that will give them a solid foundation to succeed. We further aim to promote social inclusion to access everyday opportunities and community participation. The role requires casual staff to work ad hoc early shifts (7am-3pm) , late shifts (2pm-10pm) , long days (7am-10pm), sleep-ins, a minimum of 2 weekends per month (when required) and religious celebration days. The home will be closed on bank holidays unless service needs require us to be open. This shift-based role involves personal care/manual handling, domestic duties including preparation of meals and cleaning, medication administration, key working, report writing and accompanying the children on activities and appointments. Pinecroft invests heavily in the continued professional development of its staff, once you have completed your probation, we will offer the opportunity to gain the nationally recognised Level 4 children and young peoples and family’s practitioner residential pathway qualification.
For more information about these roles or for an informal discussion please contact: Helena Baptista, Registered Manager on 0118 937 2993 or email at helena.baptista@brighterfuturesforchildren.org
Children Looked After Team
Full time, Permanent post
Salary: £44,648 to £49,418 pa (Includes £8,000 Market Supplement)
Closing date: 27 October 2024
Interview date: To be confirmed
Job reference: BFC0781
We currently have a vacancy for qualified social workers in our Children Looked After Team.
The Children Looked After Team consists of 7 social workers, an Assistant Team Manager and a Team Manager. We also have students in our team who provide great support and learning to the team. We are Corporate Parents for our children in care and seek to ensure that all children in care achieve permanency and have effective care planning. The team works closely with Independent Reviewing Officers, virtual school, permanency team and health colleagues to ensure that our children and young peoples’ needs are being met. The Team are very committed and passionate about the children they serve to ensure the best outcomes is achieved for them.
We aim to ensure that our social workers have all the tools they need to do an exceptional job. Our Assistant Team Manager and Team Manager are hands to coach, mentor and support our staff through complex and high-risk case work. We also have access to Children in Care CAMHs, and an Emotional Wellbeing Panel that is crucial to support us with the work we do with our children and young people. There is also reflective team supervision to support your learning.
For any query or informal discussion, please feel free to contact hiring manager – Matthew Hearn on Matthew.Hearn@brighterfuturesforchildren.org
Considering a career in childcare?
Click the button below to find out about childcare career pathways in Reading.
Routes into Teaching
Our local Initial Teacher Education provider, the University of Reading, works in partnership with local schools to provide various routes into teaching. These include primary and secondary School Direct, school-based routes into teaching through which trainee teachers are embedded in local schools throughout the year as well as attending university for core training and support. Visit the following pages for further information and to find out your next step on the road to becoming a teacher:
If you are a Reading school interested in hosting ITE, please find out more and contact the University via Institute of Education – Partnership website
This can be a great way to ‘grow your own’ teachers, and with both salaried and tuition-fee funded routes available there is not necessarily any cost to the school.
How to join us
Our staff are at the very core of what we do. Without them we wouldn’t be able to provide any of our services. They represent us within the community and are at the frontline of decision making for many children, young people and their families.
Our aim is to value, support and enable everyone to be able to do their jobs well and it’s the same for our employees of the future.
We value the fact that it takes time in your busy day to call and make an enquiry or to complete an application form. It is important to us that we provide an efficient and effective service to everyone that we have contact with and we aim to provide all candidates with a very positive and efficient recruitment experience.
We aim to confirm receipt of all enquiries within 48hrs and to keep you informed at each stage of the recruitment process.
Most of our communication with you will be via email so be sure to give us the correct email address.
We welcome enquiries and visits so if you would like to pop in and meet us and see who we are prior to making an application or attending an interview then just let us know.
While you're here...Ever thought about becoming a foster carer?
Foster carers receive an allowance, so essentially it’s a paid role and can be a hugely rewarding career!