EDS Referral Coordinator - Devon, United Kingdom - Devon County Council

Description

EDS roles also offer 20% unsocial hours allowance in addition to your base line salary

Are you an experienced administrator who is looking for a new challenge, and passionate about making a difference to the lives of children and young people? Then we would love to hear from you

About the Role

We currently have permanent vacancies for Referral Coordinators based in our Children's Emergency Duty Service a team that provides statutory safeguarding services to Devon's children and young people outside of normal work hours. This also includes support for children in Devon's care and care leavers as well as the wider statutory duties under PACE. We are a small friendly team comprising of advanced social workers and family practitioners each bringing a variety of skill and experience.

As the first point of contact you will answer and triage all initial enquiries to be able to filter and prioritise before inputting onto the database whilst actively promoting DCC Customer Service Standards. You will have contact with members of the public, service users, and professionals, providing guidance and/or information from Social Care. This includes gathering data from records relating to service users and other relevant information to either signpost or pass over to other professionals and colleagues. You will need to establish the nature of any enquires or requests for information, including being able to identify the urgency and importance, to enable you to make judgements to respond and triage accordingly. Good communication skills and an excellent telephone manner will be essential demonstrating empathy, sensitivity and understanding the importance of service user confidentiality. You will need to be able to establish situations that have reached a level of risk or seriousness in terms of urgency that require an oversight by delegated senior staff. You will also need to have a good understanding of various support services available to give callers the most appropriate guidance about where support can be accessed if this is not social care.

About us

We are on an exciting and ambitious journey of cultural change to embed and relational ways of working. We believe that for the vast majority of families, the family home is the best place by far for children to live, with local, place-based support that includes help and support at the earliest opportunity from us and our partners. By making key changes and improvements, we have made sure that our workers have access to better tools and technology: from mobile phones and laptops, to risk assessment training and care planning resources. Together, we've worked hard to get to know individual children better - understanding who they are and their needs, so we can implement appropriate interventions. By ensuring families have the necessary support, we can prevent concerns from escalating. We're really proud of our workforce, and what has been achieved for children and families in Devon. Our social work teams are committed to providing the best service possible and are supported by our ambitious culture. We are keen to learn, grow and improve and we're looking for people who share our values to join us.