Leaving Care Personal Adviser

Salary

£34,434 - £39,152

Contractual hours

Basis

Fixed Hours

Package

We are pleased to offer a wide range of benefits to support you and your wellbeing. You can read about them on our Why work for us pages.

Job category/type

Social Work - Children

Date posted

29/04/2026

Job reference

REQ0000843

Leaving Care Personal Advisor - Generic 2 posts - one full time 37 hours and one part time 28 hours.

Job introduction

The personal advisors in the 18+ Team provide vital support and advice to our Care Leavers during their transition from living in care to full independence.

It is possible you may have a mixed caseload, made up for young people who arrived in the UK as unaccompanied minors, and young people who came into the care system via other routes.

Closing date: Midnight 19 July 2026

Interview Date: 27 July 2026

Interview Date: TBC

For an informal discussion, please contact Bob Uden - Team/Pod Manager on ***email_hidden***

About the role

It’s an exciting time to be join this busy team, who are a highly committed group of staff - they are passionate about ensuring all our care leavers are offered every opportunity to successfully transition to full independence, with the best outcomes possible – including, but not limited to:

• successfully adapt to life in the UK and achieve settled status

• engage in education, training and employment opportunities

• acquire solid budgeting, problem solving, and independence skills

• maintain their accommodation successfully, and secure housing stability

• live a healthy lifestyle and access health services

• make positive use of community and leisure services

• promote family and friendship links

• be aware of their responsibilities as citizens

The team also works closely with other professionals, including statutory service such as health, adult social care, mental health services, probation, immigration solicitors, the Home Office and Immigration officials, as well has community and voluntary sector organisations, who provide a range of services in the city.

We believe that putting relationship-based practice at the heart of everything we do enables us to provide consistent and quality support to care leavers so that they can have the very best start in adult life and to live happy, healthy and safe and independent lives.

The changes that were introduced to our model of practice have had a very positive impact on our ability to provide consistent support to young people.

A previous Peer Review highlighted that our ‘social workers and support staff at every level were impressive’ and they had ‘confidence in the management team’. But we can’t realise our ambition to become a centre of excellence and best practice without more dedicated, skilled and motivated workers like you.

We will give you the time and active support you need to make a real difference to young people’s lives and you will be encouraged to take part in practice research and to contribute to practice development within the service.

Our pod model is based on providing emotional containment for social workers and Personal Advisors - we have developed a supervision model which includes weekly group supervision, monthly 1:1 supervision, and Reflective Practice Groups for practitioners and managers at every level.

We have recognised that we need to do further work to support families and communities who experience racism in the city and to support our Black, and Global Majority staff. As a council we have made a commitment to working towards becoming an anti-racist organisation and we have set up an Anti-Racist Project to make sure we achieve this within children's social work services. We also appointed a Lead Practitioner for Anti-Racist Practice and we are one of the Local Authorities piloting the Workforce Race Equality Standards for social care in 2021.

If you have the skills, interest and experience of working with Care Leavers and/or have experience of working with UASC, we would like to hear from you.

Please read our Apply for a job at the council (brighton-hove.gov.uk) pages carefully. They give you all the guidance you need to complete your application as well as information on what will happen after you’ve submitted your application and at interview.

As part of your application, you will need to complete your education and work history and upload a supporting statement. Your supporting statement is the most important part of your application as it will be used in the shortlisting process to assess whether you meet the essential requirements for the role that are set out in the person specification and to decide whether you should be offered an interview. Before you start your application, please read our guidance here (Supporting statement guidance (brighton-hove.gov.uk) as this gives important advice which will increase your chance of success in the shortlisting process.

Encouraging a diverse workforce

Our city is known and loved for its diversity. Not only is the mixture of people, culture and skills vital to the economic and social development of the city, it's what makes Brighton & Hove such a great place to live, work and visit. We are committed to developing and retaining a workforce that is representative of the diverse communities we serve so we welcome applications from individuals from all backgrounds. In order to achieve our aims of proportionate representation, we particularly encourage applicants from a BME or White Other background as well as those who identify as disabled, male or trans.

Find out more about our commitment to being a fair and inclusive place to work where everyone can achieve their potential by reading about our fair and inclusive actions, our anti-racism strategy and the work we are doing to encourage a diverse workforce (brighton-hove.gov.uk).

Why work for us?

As a council, we want to:

• be connected
• be confident
• be innovative and creative
• be diverse and inclusive
• be healthy and psychologically safe

For more information about our values and the benefits of working at the council, visit Why work for us which gives details of our wellbeing support, our benefits including leave and pensions as well as details of our training and development.

How to apply

Please read our Apply for a job at the council pages carefully. They give you all the guidance you need to complete your application as well as information on what will happen after you’ve submitted your application and at interview.

As part of your application, you will need to provide your education and career history and answer some application/shortlisting questions. Your answers to the application/shortlisting questions are the most important part of your application as they will be used in the shortlisting process to assess whether you meet the essential requirements for the role that are set out in the person specification and to decide whether you should be offered an interview. Before you start your application, please read our Shortlisting questions guidance (brighton-hove.gov.uk) as this gives important advice which will increase your chance of success in the shortlisting process.

AI advice for candidates

We are interested in hearing about your experience and skills in your own words. While we value people who know how to use AI, we ask that you minimise using it in your application.

We are keen to hear how your experience and skills align to our values and the skills and experience needed to perform well in our roles with clear real examples from you. To support you in this, we have guidance on using the STAR model which can help you ensure you are telling us your whole story. We also provide clarity on the skills we are looking for in our adverts and in the job description/person specification attached to each job advert.

All the applications we receive are read by at least two hiring managers and we do not use AI in this process. Our experience of reading applications is that those that have heavily used AI contain generic paragraphs that are strikingly similar to other applicants’ responses. This makes it extremely difficult to differentiate between applications, and doesn't give us enough evidence of your individual skills. There is a risk that we will therefore not be able to shortlist you. Instead, we recommend you ensure your application stands out by presenting clear examples of your actual skills and experiences in your own words.

Additional information

Your starting salary will be pro rata if the above position is less than 37 hours or term-time only.

Please note that this post is exempt from the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974, and is subject to a Disclosure & Barring Service (DBS) Check.

We are a workplace that supports flexibility and employee wellbeing in the way we work whilst providing the best service for our customers. Team and service working arrangements are designed to support both employee work life balance and team collaboration. These would be part of your individual working arrangements alongside any personal preference agreed with your manager in advance of joining. Your contractual location will be the designated council office for your team and travel to and from your contractual location would be at your own expense.