Referrals & Partnerships Officer

Due to growth of our community, we are looking to fill a new vacancy in our Operations Team. This is for experienced planner and negotiator to join our family-focussed specialist service which is dedicated to supporting children with disabilities and complex medical needs.

Don't just take our word for it - one of our foster carers recently said:

We have a new opportunity within our Operations team for a highly organised and confident professional with experience of managing high-volume communications and building effective external partnerships.

The successful candidate will take the lead on managing and triaging a high volume of referrals for children who require foster care from Local Authorities across the UK, identifying children with disabilities whose needs align with our specialist service, and ensuring accurate and timely recording of referral data within our internal case management system, Foster Kit, to discuss and share with our fostering community.

They will also oversee and track pre-placement planning activity to ensure our robust matching processes are completed to ensure smooth move-ins for children joining their new fostering families.

Alongside referral management, the role will lead on maintaining and developing strong working relationships with Local Authority partners. This includes regular communication regarding referrals and placements, promoting Fostering Together’s specialist offer, coordinating partnership activity, and contributing to discussions around placement availability, fees and contractual arrangements.

The role will also engage in support of internal planned short breaks arrangements (whereby children may stay for overnights with another family) working with the Social Work team to ensure suitable assessment, planning and matching criteria is documented and evidenced on records.

This role may also include responsibility for the day-to-day support, guidance and line management of another administrator within the Operations team, ensuring high standards of practice, accuracy and professionalism across all referral and partnership activity.

You will be part of an aspirational fostering team where you will uphold the core values and beliefs of the organisation and contribute to the growth and development of the agency. This includes ensuring that children and young people with disabilities are supported to live in safe, nurturing and stable family homes.

The ideal candidate will be confident, highly organised, and comfortable working with sensitive information, external stakeholders and competing priorities in a fast-paced, office-based environment.

• Act as a key point of contact for Local Authority commissioning and placements teams, maintaining positive, professional relationships with existing and new Local Authority partners.
• Review, filter and prioritise referrals to identify children and young people with disabilities whose needs align with Fostering Together’s specialist service. Condense and succinctly summarise information into a quick-digest format onto Foster Kit (our data management and sharing platform).
• Liaise with the social work and placement teams to share relevant referral information and support effective matching decisions.
• Write engaging and informative profiles for families with capacity to foster a child to proactively promote locally to relevant authorities.
• Track referral outcomes and support reporting on referral trends and partnership activity.
• Coordinate communication, promotional activity and information sharing relating to Fostering Together’s fostering offer.
• Support discussions relating to placement availability, fees and contractual terms, escalating where appropriate.
• Represent Fostering Together in partnership communications and meetings (typically office-based video calls, with occasional external conferences required).
• Provide day-to-day oversight, support and line management to an administrator contributing…