Job Description

Post: Family Liaison Officer

Accountable to:

Business Support Manager

Base:

Serennu Children's Centre

Location:

Across Gwent (with travel across multiple sites)

Salary:

14,590 per annum

Hours:

22.5 hours per week, Wednesday to Friday, 9am-5pm

Contract:

Permanent

Holidays:

25 days per year pro rata, not including bank holidays

Pension:

Automatic enrolment pension scheme. Sparkle matches members' 5% contribution.

About Sparkle

Sparkle is the official charity supporting Serennu Children's Centre, Nevill Hall Children's Centre and Caerphilly Children's Centre.

Sparkle's principles are to ensure that children with a disability or developmental difficulty, and their families, are fully supported to participate in valued childhood experiences and have access to the same range of opportunities, activities, services and facilities as other children.

Several hundred children visit the centres each week. Sparkle has to raise more than 750,000 every year to fund the vital services we deliver, including specialist leisure activities, family activities, and holistic family support services.

Job Purpose

To act as a first point of contact for all families with respect to any enquiries they may have with regard to services or leisure activities that children and young people require and actively seek out parents who are struggling or in need of support.

To meet with families of children with disabilities and developmental difficulties to improve access to health, social care, education and leisure, signposting to appropriate services and supporting families to develop plans to meet child and family needs.

To work as part of the children's centre team accepting referrals from a wide range of professionals for families in need of support, contributing to the delivery of child and family services within community settings.

To work independently under the management of the Business Support Manager, taking initiative in respect of family support activities that may need to be implemented to meet child, young person and family needs.

To work in partnership with key stakeholders including the health board, social services, parents and children/young people to develop sustainable enhanced services at the children's centres.

To ensure all families are provided with access to appropriate support services and leisure activities across Gwent.

Key responsibilities

To undertake consultation with families, facilitating focus groups, developing case studies and digital stories and undertaking user evaluation to clearly understand families' needs in respect of the enhanced support and leisure services they require.

To meet with parents/ carers / families face to face to listen and discuss their issues which may be multi-faceted in respect of physical, social, financial and environmental issues.

To listen to the issues that families raise and provide constructive, helpful, sensitive solutions.

To listen to families who are distressed and anxious about their child or young person, possessing the emotional resilience to provide support and sign posting on as needed.

To manage families who may be verbally aggressive with sensitivity and tact, seeking support from senior managers as appropriate.

To understand the range of services and agency support that can be accessed by vulnerable children and families within the children's centre catchment area so as to be able to sign post effectively.

To facilitate meetings between families and professionals in respect of key issues that families raise and require the support of agencies to resolve.

To clearly articulate the priorities for families and the outcomes they wish to achieve to ensure any new model of enhanced support and leisure services will achieve these outcomes.

To work with other professionals to identify how parents could be better supported to be more empowered, building self-esteem and confidence to enable them to manage with less support from services.

To work within the ISCAN Regional Service, attending ISCAN meetings where necessary.

To engage with families to build relationships and trust, and act as a first point of contact for all families accessing children's centres.

To be fully informed about the full range of services available to families across Gwent to include appropriate signposting.

To assist and/or signpost families to the most relevant person, professional or activity.

To support the family in achieving resolution in accessing all appropriate services to meet their child's needs.

To support professionals in working with families, undertaking joint visits as appropriate.

To receive suggestions and ideas from children, young people and their families and act upon those where possible.

To arrange open "information" days, including inviting parents groups, voluntary sector organisations, relevant public sector organisations, etc.

To enable the flow of information between parents/families and voluntary sector organisations.

To encourage and compile all service user feedback from surveys, projects and user-initiated activities including robust monitoring, evaluation and reporting.

To undertake any administration relevant for the role and complete reports for Sparkle and ISCAN Boards as requested.

To be familiar with the complaints and comments procedures and policies for Sparkle and outside organisations.

To demonstrate a willingness to undertake relevant training, development and learning opportunities to improve skills and knowledge.

To participate in supervision with an agreed supervisor.

To comply with the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 procedures and processes.

To work within all relevant Sparkle, ABUHB and Children Centre policies and procedures, working proactively to improve services for children and families.

To observe confidentiality in all aspects of work.

To listen to complaints from families about services, resolving informally where possible and escalating as appropriate to senior manager.

To undertake any duties and/or times of work as may be reasonably required of you, commensurate with your grade or general level of responsibility within the organisation, at your place of work or based in any other establishment.

Confidentiality

In the course of your duties you may have access to confidential material about children, young people and their families. On no account must information be divulged to anyone other than authorised persons, for example, other professional staff as appropriate. If you are in any doubt whatsoever as to the authority of a person or body asking for information of this nature, you must seek advice from your manager.

Similarly, no information of a personal confidential nature concerning individual members of staff should be divulged to anyone without the proper authority having first been given. Failure to observe these rules will be regarded by your employers as serious gross misconduct, which could result in disciplinary action being taken against you. Individuals will be responsible for any records they create, use or handle. This responsibility is established at, and defined by law.

All employees who record, handle, store or otherwise come across information, have a personal common-law duty of confidence. The Data Protection Act 2018, places statutory restrictions on the use of personal information, including health information. All staff need to acknowledge the importance of personal records and their responsibilities.

It's security is of prime importance and serious consequences can result should a record go missing. Any disclosure of such information without permission is a disciplinary offence and may result in dismissal.

Special Conditions

Working Hours

The post holder will be required to work flexibly and the post will require evening and weekend working as required by the needs of Sparkle.

Disclosure and Barring Service

This post is subject to an enhanced Disclosure and Barring check with a children barred list check.

This post is subject to an exception order under the provisions of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974. This stipulates that all previous convictions, including those that are 'spent' must be declared.

Previous convictions will not necessarily preclude an individual from employment but must be declared in writing at the appropriate stage during the recruitment process.

General Responsibilities

Health & Safety

It is the responsibility of all employees to work to achieve a healthy and safe environment, and to take reasonable care of themselves and others.

Equality & Diversity

It is the responsibility of all employees to support Sparkle's vision of promoting a positive approach to diversity and equality of opportunity, to eliminate discrimination and disadvantage in service delivery and employment, and to manage, support or comply through the implementation of Equality & Diversity Strategies and Policies.

This job description sets out the main duties of the post at the date when it was drawn up. Such duties may vary from time to time without changing the general character of the post or the level of responsibility entailed. Such variations are a common occurrence and cannot of themselves justify a reconsideration of the grading of the post.

Sparkle is committed to Safeguarding and Promoting the welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults

Job Types: Part-time, Permanent

Pay: 14,590.00 per year

Expected hours: 22.5 per week

Benefits:

On-site parking
Work Location: In person

Application deadline: 31/10/2025