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Fostering and Kinship Vacancies
Devon County Council
Children’s Assessing Social Worker – Fostering, Recruitment & Assessment Team (REQ007764) – closing 04/05/25
Children’s Social Care Team Manager – Kinship Assessment Service (REQ007806) – closing 05/05/25
Children’s Assessing Social Worker – Children & Parent Assessment Team (REQ007810) – closing 11/05/25
Children’s Assessing Social Worker – Kinship Services (REQ007446) – closing 18/05/25
Do it for improving children’s life chances
Join us and ensure that every Devon child receives the same high-quality service, no matter where they live.
Fostering Devon
Fostering Devon provides in-house fostering placements that offer a stable and consistent experience of family life to Devon’s looked-after children and young people. The service aims to train and develop foster carers to deliver therapeutic parenting to heal traumatised children and young people. The fostering service supports and contributes to this mission by providing an effective, efficiently managed, high-quality foster care service within available resources. It meets the needs of children identified through assessment planning and review stages and aims to ensure the best possible outcomes for children in foster care.
Fostering Devon consists of an assessment team responsible for supporting prospective carers through the application process, from live event recruitment t supporting their initial fostering period after approval at the foster panel. Fostering Devon also has support and supervision teams who are responsible for supporting approved foster carers through their fostering journey, helping them to therapeutically meet the needs of the children they care for and developing their skills in fostering.
The Kinship Assessment Service
The Kinship Assessment Service comprises of three small teams that undertake kinship carer assessments, special guardianship assessments and connected carer assessments.
The kinship service has a key role in supporting Devon County Council as a corporate parent for children who cannot live with their own families. Devon County Council upholds the right of every child to grow up in a stable and loving family environment. We recognise that a child’s best interests are usually met within their birth family or extended family.
CPAT Team
The Child and parent Assessment team (CPAT) are a specialist team who work within Devon Childrens services to provide parenting assessments utilising the ParentAssess model, in both Child and Parent fostering placements and in the community.
A parent and child placement is a specialist fostering arrangement where a parent and their baby or young child are placed together with a fostering family. CPAT foster carers provide support and guidance to help parent(s) develop the skills they need to care for their child; they provide a nurturing family environment to ensure the child is safe and protected from harm. The aim is to give the parent/s and child the best chances of moving on and living together permanently in the community.
Join our team
We are looking for innovative social workers to work in these teams to shape the future of fostering, keeping the child at the centre of all we do whilst adhering to regulatory requirements.
We are committed to providing you with excellent supervision, support, training and development opportunities within a vibrant service where children and families are at the centre of all practice.
We aim to provide a high-quality service for children and their families with robust assessments that support permanent decisions for children.
We are seeking to develop our offer to kinship carers and special guardians to ensure that there is a seamless service for children and their families both prior to and post-permanence orders.
Each of the teams has a permanent team manager who is committed to supporting you and the children and families you work with. We have a practice model of restorative practice whereby we provide high support and have high expectations.
This is a fantastic opportunity to be part of our improvement journey and positively influence the lives of children and families we are privileged to work with.
Career Opportunities
Looking for a career in Children’s Social Care?
Why we do it for Devon
The place to live
We’re lucky to live in one of the most beautiful parts of the country. Whether you like the sea, the countryside or the city, find out why Devon is the place for you.
The place to work
Think you know local government? Think again. Modern. Flexible. Inclusive. Find a job that makes a difference and contributes to your local community, and gives you the flexibility and support you need.
Flexible working opportunities
Working at Devon County Council, you will be offered a whole host of flexible working opportunities – but what exactly does this mean?
Want to find out more about Children's Social Care? Get in touch
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