Senior Advice Worker – SEND
Employer: Kinship
Location: Home-based or hybrid (Vauxhall office), with occasional travel across England
Working hours: part-time - 21 hours a week
Salary: £35000 (plus London Weighting if applicable of £3,405.85 per annum FTE) pro rata
Closing date: 20/04/2026 12:00 pm
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The Senior Advice Worker – SEND will be the specialist and subject expert in Special Educational Needs and Disabilities and kinship care. You’ll provide 1:1 advice directly to kinship carers on all issues that impact on their caring role.
You will often be supporting kinship carers in high crisis. It will be part of your job to calm a situation quickly and support people to communicate what they need so you can provide personalised in-depth advice.
You’ll provide advice by phone, video calls and email, but you’ll also need to be able to respond to text, WhatsApp and online chat and other channels as we develop the service.
You’ll specialise in providing advice and information to enable kinship carers to support children with SEND needs, including speech, language and communication difficulties, social, emotional and mental health challenges, specific learning difficulties, and autism.
This will include advice and casework to support kinship carers to navigate the education system, understand Education, Health and Care Plan processes and access support from schools, children’s services and CAMHS.
As subject expert, you’ll provide expert input to the development of written information and resources and the development and delivery of specialist training for kinship carers. You will be expected to travel to support in-person roadshows as part of our Training service.
You’ll ensure advisers are kept up to date with information and policy updates and contribute to helping to ‘change the system’ for kinship carers in England and Wales.
You’ll build and maintain relationships with key organisations, e.g. National Association of Virtual School Heads, to ensure advice is relevant.Key responsibilities:
General advice provision
Respond to enquiries through a range of incoming channels. This includes taking calls on our advice line, as well as responding to enquiries submitted through our website, via internal referral or other channels.
Provide high quality advice and information to kinship carers on their rights, entitlements and responsibilities in relation to welfare benefits, local authority allowances, support from children’s services, relevant legal orders, sources of educational, parenting and legal support and other issues that may be required.
Assess vulnerability and risk to prioritise and respond to kinship carers’ issues in a timely manner.
Research individual cases and identify possible courses of action.
Address all safeguarding concerns in line with policy.
Make referrals and signpost to other services as necessary.
Where appropriate, provide additional advice or support to enable the client to take action or undertake follow-up action on behalf of the client to move the case on.
Person-centred approach
Facilitate access to our advice service for people with diverse needs, e.g. by using appropriate translation services or assistive technology.
Adapt communication style to respond appropriately to differing needs.
Provide advice in a format that is manageable and understandable for the individual kinship carer.
Apply agreed Kinship models of practice as appropriate, e.g. taking a trauma-informed approach.
Service quality, consistency and data management
Respond to all enquiries in line with Kinship’s advice service framework, standards and performance targets.
Maintain appropriate boundaries and effective control of enquiries to deliver targeted support whilst working within the limits of your own and the service’s competence.
Ensure independence, impartiality and confidentiality when dealing with kinship carers.
Accurately record all contact and enquiry information in Salesforce in line with service framework and data protection requirements.
Ensure accurate data entry in Salesforce to support service performance, evaluation and learning.
Acting as subject expert
Provide specialist advice and casework on SEND-related issues. This may involve:
providing additional advice or support to enable a client to take action
undertaking follow-up action on behalf of the client to move the case on, e.g. negotiating with third parties
taking on complex casework to pursue significant outcomes for the client or strategic impact for all kinship carers
Proactively update colleagues across Kinship on relevant updates in the SEND landscape, providing guidance to teams.
Work closely with training colleagues to develop, create and occasionally lead training sessions to support kinship carers to navigate the SEND system.
Work closely with Content Designers to create factsheets, video content, podcasts and other content and resources as required.
Act as subject expert on Special Educational Needs and Disabilities and kinship care as part of a Knowledge Board.
Represent Kinship at meetings and events as required.
Contribute specialist knowledge to funding proposals and monitoring and evaluation reports.
Management and supervision
Line manage and supervise Advice Workers.
Set clear objectives to achieve targets and outcomes.
Actively encourage personal development and learning.
Increase efficiencies and impact across the team.
Ensure good team induction processes and systems are in place.
As a member of the Senior Advice Leadership Team, contribute to leadership of the advice team and support the Advice Service Manager to set and implement advice service policies and procedures.
Role model Kinship values.
Professional and service development
Maintain up-to-date knowledge of relevant legislation, policy and guidance.
Support continuous development and improvement of the service through implementation of new systems and processes as required.
Support a learning culture by contributing to thinking and discussions around how we can continuously improve the service to better meet kinship carers’ needs.
Work closely with colleagues as required, both within the advice service team and across Kinship, to support the delivery of activities to enhance support offered to kinship carers.
Team culture and innovation
Act in the best interest of Kinship and the families we support.
Maintain and contribute to up to date understanding of issues affecting kinship carers.
Deliver effective administration with attention to detail and keeping to deadlines.
Identify and contribute to appropriate case studies to demonstrate the impact of Kinship services and contribute to policy and campaigns work.
Actively contribute to delivering and evidencing a high performing service.
Take responsibility for your ongoing continued professional development.
Work in line with the Kinship values.
Experience requirements:
Experience and Knowledge
Minimum of 2 years’ recent experience of delivering in-depth advice work on complex social welfare legal issues (e.g. benefits, housing, education or social care) to members of the public.
Experience of giving both telephone and written advice.
Either significant knowledge of and expertise in the SEND system and SEND-related issues, with the ability to develop expertise in kinship care advice; or, Significant knowledge of and expertise in kinship care advice, with substantial knowledge of SEND-related advice issues and the ability to become an expert in SEND advice for kinship carers.
A demonstrable knowledge of relevant sources of advice and information.
Knowledge and evidence of good understanding of safeguarding issues and good practice.
Proven understanding of the importance of confidentiality and a non-judgmental approach.
Experience and confidence in development of resources
Experience of effective management and supervision of staff, projects and/or services.
Experience using Case Management Systems and/or Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platforms.
Essential advice-giving skills and abilities
Excellent interpersonal skills, and particularly, a sensitive and professional telephone manner.
Excellent written communication skills in English.
Proven ability to research complex information and communicate this in an easily understandable way.
Evidence of good judgement, knowing when to seek support from manager or colleagues or signpost clients to other sources of advice.
Proven understanding and practice of keeping accurate and appropriate case records.
A commitment to fair access to justice for marginalised people.
Other essential skills and abilities
Ability to work flexibly, collaboratively and effectively as part of a team.
Ability to organise and prioritise a busy workload without close supervision.
Confident in using digital tools, and an ability to learn new tools.
A commitment to the vision, mission and values of Kinship.
A demonstrable commitment to apply equality, diversity and inclusion principles in all areas of work.
Willingness to travel across England on occasion, as required (such as for events), working flexibly in response to the need.
Right to work in the UK.
Desired skills:
Experience working as a SENDIASS adviser or having undertaken SEND law training for professionals
Citizens Advice Certificate in Generalist Advice Work or an NVQ Advice & Guidance qualification or equivalent.
Experience of working in the voluntary sector.
Personal experience of kinship care or thorough understanding of the experience of kinship care.
Understanding of SEND and education systems in Wales.
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