About the Role

Calling all residential children's care workers, whether you're seeking a move within the children’s residential care sector, or are new to it but have relevant transferable skills and life experience. If you share our passion for improving the lives of young people, providing them with the best possible experiences while with us, and giving them the greatest opportunities to thrive when they leave the safety of our care. If you want to learn, grow, and progress with an 'Outstanding' company that is committed to doing its best for its young people as well as its staff. And if you want to work in one of our three idyllic Peak District settings, we'd be interested to hear more about you.

Job Opportunity

At Arnfield Care, we are always on the lookout for the next batch of like-minded residential care superstars to join our ranks and progress their careers. We can offer junior and senior full-time, part-time and relief roles to the right people and might even be able to consider you for a position if you have clearly transferable skills but no previous experience in the sector.

Key aspects of children's residential care work:

• Ensuring each young person is safe and cared for effectively, addressing care, education, social, emotional, cultural, therapeutic and health needs.
• Exercising appropriate control over children and young people at all times
• Working in partnership with parents, families, carers, and other professionals to advocate for, safeguard and promote the welfare of children and young people.
• Covering various shifts including early mornings, late evenings, and sleep-ins, on weekdays, weekends, and Bank Holidays, within the Homes and on residential trips.
• Promoting an organisational culture which values every team member’s contribution and is intolerant of discrimination in any form.
• Maintaining the highest levels of confidentiality.

Established in 1997 and based in the High Peak area of Derbyshire, we are an outstanding, small, and proudly independent provider of high-quality therapeutic residential care and on-site education for children and young people. We support young people, aged 11–17, to deal with trauma resulting from a wide range of complex social, emotional and behavioural challenges in their formative years, helping them to rebuild trust, develop independence, and move forward with confidence.

Our care workers, therapists and educators pride themselves on being nurturing and supportive, and our approach is grounded in building warm, consistent, respectful and structured relationships tailored to individual needs, whether a young person is with us for a relatively short period of intensive crisis intervention work or here on a longer-term placement as they transition towards semi-independence. That's why we achieve consistently successful outcomes with young people, why staff stay with us and build long-term careers, and why we are recognised by Ofsted as an exemplar to others.

We offer:

• £13.05 - £16.24 per hour, dependent on the role applied for, qualifications and experience
• £70.50 per sleep-in
• A Minimum of 28 days' holiday, rising to 35 days, plus additional days for loyalty
• A great work/life balance
• Company pension
• Loyalty & referral bonuses, ranging from £50 - £500, plus perks and discounts
• A comprehensive Employee Assistance Programme, available 24/7/365
• Fully funded training
• Long-term career progression

We employ people not paper!

Some of our best candidates entry-level candidates bring a variety of transferable skills and valuable life experiences to their roles, making them excellent recruits for our team. Their knowledge of appropriate boundaries and innate ability to make connections with young people are the ideal foundation for our thorough training on the more technical aspects of our work. Obviously, for more senior roles, we need to see evidence of academic and on-the-job learning.

We achieve consistently successful outcomes with young people because we employ a diverse workforce that can empathise with the cultures they come from and the issues they face. People who have learned important lessons from the school of life often have the greatest impact on vulnerable children and young people who have already experienced significant challenges and trauma.

Essential Skills

You must...

• Be eligible to work in the UK
• Have a full manual driving licence
• Possess a good standard of both written and spoken English
• Have some previous experience working in children's residential care settings, or significant transferable skills for anything other than entry-level positions
• Have a level 3/4 in residential Childcare (or equivalent), if applying for a more senior role
• Have a basic awareness of Child Protection and Safeguarding practices
• Possess a strong teamwork ethic and have good communication skills
• Have an ability to relate to children and young people, especially those presenting challenging behaviour
• Be emotionally resilient and self-confident, while a splash of long-term ambition always helps
• Be prepared to promote equal opportunities and to challenge any behaviour or practice that discriminates against any young person or colleague.
• Have the ability to work flexibly and unsupervised on occasions, according to the needs of the service
• Be able to commit to full-time sleep-ins and, potentially, short residential trips away with young people

As an inclusive employer, Arnfield Care Ltd stands