Passion4Fusion is looking for a compassionate and culturally aware Social Worker to join our team. In this role, you will support Black, Brown, and multi-ethnic parents /carers and families within Scotland’s social care system. You will play a critical role in promoting equitable care and fostering understanding of cultural differences while advocating for systemic change.

This position is ideal for someone committed to social justice, cultural competence, and improving outcomes for ethnically diverse communities.

Key Responsibilities

Family-Centered Support

• Build trusting relationships with parents/carers and families from diverse backgrounds, ensuring their voices are central to decision-making.
• Provide culturally safe parenting support, tailored to a families’ needs; e.g. early intervention to prevent crisis escalation; cultural expectations & children’s rights in Scotland; parenting an adolescent in a new culture; alternatives to physical punishment.
• Collaborate with families to develop care plans that respect and integrate their cultural values and traditions.

Cultural Competence and Advocacy

• Support parents/carers through advocacy in meetings with social care, helping them to articulate their views and challenging bias & discrimination where necessary.
• Identify and address cultural barriers in social care interventions, ensuring all children and families receive equitable treatment.
• Provide insights and advice on cultural best practices to colleagues and other professionals within the care system.

Community Engagement

• Partner with external stakeholders to bridge gaps between communities and the social care system.
• Actively participate in training sessions, workshops, and community programs designed to improve cultural awareness within social work.

Training and Development

• Attend and lead cultural competence training programs to improve understanding of unconscious bias, anti-racism, and systemic inequities.
• Act as a champion for anti-discriminatory practices within your team, organization & across the social care system.

Monitoring and Reporting

• Track and analyse care outcomes to ensure they are equitable and free from bias.
• Provide feedback to management on systemic barriers affecting families from Black, Brown, and ethnically diverse backgrounds, contributing to organizational change initiatives.
• Collect and share data on your project for example case studies and testimonials

Partnerships and Networking

• Collaborate with community leaders, advocacy groups, and other organisations to create holistic support networks for children and families.
• Represent the organization in community forums, fostering relationships to improve trust between communities and social care services.

Essential Qualifications

• A degree in Social Work and registration with the Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC) OR significant experience providing community/parenting/therapeutic support to children & families in a professional context.
• Proven experience working with diverse and multi-ethnic communities.
• Understanding of Scotland’s safeguarding & child protection legislation.
• Strong understanding of cultural competence, anti-racism practices, and systemic inequities in social care.
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills, with the ability to build trust and understanding with diverse families.

Desirable Skills and Experience

• Experience delivering or participating in training.
• Experience (lived or professional) of Scotland’s care system.
• Multilingual skills are a plus.

What We Offer

• Ongoing professional development, including cultural awareness and anti-racism training.
• Opportunities to work closely with advocacy groups on a regional and national level
• A supportive and inclusive work environment that values diversity and innovation.
• Flexible working arrangements to promote work-life balance.

Help shape brighter futures for children and families across Scotland

At Children First, we believe every child should be safe, loved and able to enjoy a happy childhood. As Scotland's national children's charity, we work alongside children, families and communities to protect children from harm, support recovery from trauma and abuse and create lasting change.

We are looking for a compassionate, skilled and motivated Community Partnership & Participation Worker to join our team and help strengthen the support available to children and families across Scotland.

In this exciting role, you will build trusted relationships with communities, services and partner organisations, helping families access the support they need while ensuring children's and families' voices influence how services are developed and improved.

This is an opportunity to make a meaningful difference by connecting people, strengthening local networks and helping shape services that respond to what matters most to children and families.

What you'll do

Working as part of our Support Line service, you will:

• Develop strong partnerships with community organisations, schools, health services, local authorities and third sector partners.
• Improve access to support for families experiencing poverty, inequality, kinship care challenges or concerns about a child's safety.
• Increase awareness of Children First Support Line and the range of help available to families across Scotland.
• Ensure children, young people and families have meaningful opportunities to share their experiences and help shape service development.
• Support participation, engagement and co-production activities, including events, consultations and focus groups.
• Build local knowledge of community resources and identify gaps, barriers and opportunities for support.
• Gather learning and insights that help us improve services and influence positive change for children and families.

What we're looking for

• You'll bring experience of community engagement, partnership working or participation practice, along with a genuine commitment to improving outcomes for children and families.

You'll also have:

• Experience working with children, young people, families or communities.
• Strong relationship-building and partnership skills.
• Excellent communication and facilitation abilities.
• An understanding of poverty, inequality and the barriers families can face when seeking support.
• Knowledge of children's rights and participation approaches.
• Experience of trauma-informed, strengths-based and relationship-based practice.
• The ability to work independently, manage competing priorities and maintain accurate records.
• Confidence using Microsoft Office and digital communication tools.

Who you are

We're looking for someone who:

• Believes in the power of children's voices.
• Values inclusion, participation and co-production.
• Builds trust quickly and works collaboratively with others.
• Is passionate about reducing inequality and improving children's lives.
• Brings warmth, curiosity and compassion to their work.
• Shares our commitment to safeguarding and promoting children's rights.

Why join Children First?

At Children First, our values guide everything we do:

With Love

We put children first, listening with compassion and kindness and standing alongside families when they need support most.

With Purpose

We work together with families, communities and partners to create lasting change and better outcomes for children.

With Strength

We do whatever it takes to protect Scotland's children and champion their rights.

You'll join a supportive organisation that values learning, innovation and collaboration, where your work will directly contribute to helping children and families thrive.

Equity, Diversity and Inclusion

We are committed to creating a diverse, inclusive and anti-racist organisation where everyone experiences a sense of belonging. We welcome applications from people of all backgrounds and lived experiences and particularly encourage applications from groups currently under-represented within our workforce.

Join us

If you're passionate about building stronger communities, amplifying children's voices and helping families access the support they need, we'd love to hear from you.

Together, with love, purpose and strength, we can help Scotland's children and families thrive.

The Financial Wellbeing Worker will play a key role in delivering OPFS’s Whole Family Support offer, providing high-quality, person-centred and strengths-based income maximisation and financial wellbeing support to single parents and their families across Scotland.

Working within the OPFS My Life and Me framework, the postholder will support parents to understand their financial circumstances, maximise household income, manage essential expenditure and build financial resilience.

The role will involve working with single parents experiencing financial pressures including low income, benefit changes, debt, rising household costs, insecure employment and childcare costs.

Key responsibilities

• Provide high-quality one-to-one income maximisation and financial wellbeing support.
• Assess household income, expenditure, financial circumstances and priorities.
• Identify opportunities to maximise income through welfare benefits, grants and other financial support.
• Support parents with welfare benefit applications, renewals and changes of circumstances where appropriate.
• Undertake benefit entitlement checks and calculations.
• Provide early intervention and preventative financial wellbeing support, helping parents identify and address financial pressures before they escalate into crisis or unmanageable debt.
• Support parents to budget effectively and identify opportunities to reduce household expenditure and essential living costs.
• Provide Better Off in Work calculations to help parents understand the financial implications of employment or changes to working hours.
• Support parents to understand the financial impact of changes in circumstances.
• Identify and respond appropriately to immediate financial hardship, including food,fuel and other essential needs, supporting parents to access relevant crisis assistance, grants and emergency provision.
• Provide income maximisation and financial wellbeing support within the agreed scope and competency of the role, identifying where specialist welfare rights, debt or regulated advice is required and ensuring timely referral to the appropriate OPFS or external service

Supporting single parents and families

• Build positive, trusting and respectful relationships with single parents, recognising their individual circumstances, strengths and aspirations.
• Use a person centred, strengths based and trauma informed approach.
• Work alongside parents to identify financial goals and develop realistic action plans.
• Support parents to build confidence, knowledge and skills in managing household finances.
• The postholder will take a holistic, whole-family approach, recognising the links between financial wellbeing, employment, housing, childcare, health and wider family circumstances. They will identify wider needs, strengths and goals and connect parents to appropriate OPFS and partner support, ensuring families can access the right support at the right time.
• Empower parents to make informed financial decisions and develop greater financial resilience.
• Recognise the wider impact of financial hardship on parents, children and family wellbeing and identify needs which may require support beyond the presenting financial issue.
• Take a whole-family approach, connecting parents to appropriate OPFS services and external support including family support, employability, childcare, welfare rights and debt services.
• Identify safeguarding, wellbeing or other concerns and respond appropriately in line with OPFS procedures.

Information, advice and signposting

• Provide accurate and accessible financial and benefits information within the remit of the role.
• Keep up to date with changes to welfare benefits, Scottish social security and relevant financial support.
• Make appropriate internal and external referrals to specialist services
• Work closely with OPFS Debt Service, Advice and Information, Family Support, Employability and other services to provide coordinated support.
• Maintain knowledge of relevant national and local services and resources.

National outreach and partnership working

• Deliver income maximisation support nationally across Scotland through face-to-face, telephone and digital approaches.
• Undertake proactive outreach and develop flexible and accessible approaches to engage single parents who may experience barriers to accessing traditional advice and support services.
• Develop effective relationships with statutory, voluntary and community organisations.
• Represent OPFS at relevant partnership meetings, events and networks.
• Promote the OPFS income maximisation service and wider support available to single parents.

Administration, monitoring and evaluation

• Maintain accurate, confidential and timely case records in line with OPFS policies and data protection requirements.
• Record outcomes and progress and contribute to monitoring, evaluation, case studies and funder reporting.
• Record evidence of the financial impact of the service, including income maximised and savings achieved where appropriate.
• Contribute to reporting requirements associated with the Whole Family Support Third Sector Delivery Fund.

Capture parent feedback and identify emerging issues affecting single parents.

Service development

• Contribute to the development and continuous improvement of OPFS’s national income maximisation offer.
• Share learning, good practice and emerging issues with colleagues and managers.
• Contribute to developing accessible financial wellbeing information, resources and workshops.

Health, safety and safeguarding

• Comply with OPFS policies and procedures relating to safeguarding, confidentiality, equality, diversity, inclusion, health and safety and data protection.
• Promote the wellbeing and safety of single parents and their children and ensure concerns are appropriately identified, recorded and escalated.
• Maintain appropriate professional boundaries when working with parents and families.

General responsibilities

• Attend team meetings, supervision, training and development opportunities.
• Share learning and good practice and contribute to effective team working.
• Promote equality, diversity and inclusion in all aspects of the role.
• Undertake any other duties commensurate with the post as requested by the Service Manager.

The postholder will be expected to operate in line with our values which are:

justice, equity, trust, collaboration and compassion.

Overview

All roles at OPFS contribute to our mission of working with and for single parent families, providing support that enables them to achieve their potential and help create lasting solutions to the poverty and barriers facing many single parents and their children. Our core values of justice, equity, trust, collaboration and compassion are at the heart of everything we do and underpin all aspects of our work.

About this role

The Family Support Worker will play a key role in delivering the OPFS Support for Families Service, providing high-quality, person-centred, strengths-based and trauma-informed support to single parents and their children.

Working within the OPFS My Life and Me framework, the postholder will provide one-to-one and group support, undertake family assessments and case management, develop support plans and work alongside families to achieve positive and sustainable outcomes.

The role will involve working with families with a range of needs and barriers, including poverty, social isolation, wellbeing, parenting, housing, financial difficulties, employment and access to services. The Family Support Worker will work collaboratively with families and partner agencies to identify strengths, address barriers and improve outcomes for parents and children.

The postholder will work closely with the Service Manager and wider team to support effective service delivery, provide guidance to Family Support Assistants and contribute

to the ongoing development and improvement of the service.

Our Support for Families Service delivers holistic support for single parents and their children, guided by the six OPFS My Life and Me priority areas: Money, Health & Wellbeing, Home, Work, Education & Training, Children, and Relationships.