Healthy Family Support Practitioner

BARNARDO'S

26,003 per year

Colchester

Full-time

1st May 2026

Listed today

About the Service

The Essex Child and Family Wellbeing Service (ECFWS) brings together a range of existing services and is jointly commissioned by Essex County Council and the West Essex Clinical Commissioning Group.

The service is delivered by HCRG Care Group, in partnership with Barnardo's, and is designed to ensure families have easy access to local support. Staff work flexibly within the community, delivering services from Family Hubs and Delivery Sites, Early Years settings, schools, and family homes.

This innovative “services without walls” approach ensures that children and families who need support the most are reached quickly and effectively.

Areas of Support

The service delivers support across the following areas:

Health Visiting
Parenting Support
School Nursing
Family Health
Resilience and Child Development
Support for children and young people aged 0–19(up to25 for SEND)

For further information, please visitwww.essexfamilywellbeing.co.uk

About the Role

We are looking to recruit a Healthy Family Support Practitioner to join our prebirth- 5 year team in the Colchester area.

Key Responsibilities

Healthy Family Support Practitioners work with children, young people (pre‑birth to 19, or up to 25 for SEND) and their parents/carers, both individually and in groups, to:

Increase skills, confidence, and resilience
Support families to live safely and positively
Identify needs and deliver effective, outcome‑focused interventions

Work will take place in family homes, community settings, and group environments, using a variety of evidence‑based approaches.

Practitioners provide both universal and targeted intensive support, aligned to service outcomes. This includes using age‑appropriate, evidence‑informed frameworks (for example, the Early Years Foundation Stage) to plan and deliver high‑quality services that:

Support parents/carers
Enable children to thrive and reach their full potential
Promote school readiness

Application Information

When completing your application, please clearly demonstrate how your skills, knowledge, and experience meet the Person Specification, Job Description, and Additional Information document (where applicable), with an understanding of the service context outlined above.

Please note:
Due to the high volume of applications, this vacancy may close early. We strongly encourage early applications.

Contact

If you have any questions about this role, please contact:Davina.Francis@barnardos.org.uk

We know that our colleagues go above and beyond in delivering our vital work, driven by their passion and commitment to Barnardo's values.  We also know that we can only realise our ambitions and achieve better outcomes for more children, thanks to the talent, hard work and creativity of our people.

For all these reasons, we are committed to a new approach to pay and reward, to ensure it is fair, attractive and progressive, which was rolled out in April 2023. This is a positive change for the charity, and a part of our People & Culture Strategy. It will assist us in supporting colleagues to belong, thrive and grow in their colleague journey at Barnardo's and in time will offer clear routes of progression for colleagues in both their career and their pay.

Whilst the full pay band and salary range is advertised, our approach to starting salaries is to appoint between the minimum to mid-point of the pay band – this ensures that pay steps are available to reward our colleagues annually based on their contribution to excellence and alignment to our values and behaviours.  More details on Barnardo's pay framework can be found upon application.

Workplace Offer: What it means for you

Our hybrid working initiative is based on trust, flexibility and empowerment. We understand our workplace offer means different things to different people, and we encourage those conversations. This may mean working at one of our stores, services, working at home, in the community, at one of our Collaboration Hubs or depending on the role any combination of these. Please read through the advert carefully to understand the remits of hybrid working that will be specific to the role.

Barnardo's require colleagues to be UK residents, based in the UK and to complete their roles from within the UK (with the exception of colleagues providing Barnardo's services in Jersey and colleagues who live in the Republic of Ireland providing services in Northern Ireland)

Barnardo's believe in creating equality of opportunity in the workplace and supporting people to manage their work-life balance; we are therefore open to offering flexible working arrangements.
Annual Leave entitlement for full-time colleagues is 26 days per annum, increasing to 27 days per annum, after 3 years Barnardo's service, 29 days per annum, after 5 years Barnardo's service and 30 days per annum, after 7 years Barnardo's service. Those working less than full time are entitled to the same level of holiday pro rata
The ability to buy up to another 5 days annual leave via our Buy Your Leave scheme
A host of family friendly leave options including company Maternity Paternity and Adoption pay; together with all family additional leave options
Service related sick pay from day 1
Access to a Group Personal Pension with a matched 4% or 6% contribution from Barnardo's. Ability to pay via salary sacrifice to garner both tax and NI savings on your own contribution
Death in service cover of 4x annual earnings for all staff contributing to our Group Personal Pension
Cycle2work scheme
Interest free season ticket loans
Discounts and cashback from at high street shops including major supermarkets, cinemas, gyms, leisure/theme parks, holidays and much more via our Benefit Portal
20% discount at Barnardo's stores
Opportunity to purchase a health cash plan to claim towards dental, glasses, therapy etc
Free access to round the clock employee assistance program for advice and support
Access to Barnardo's Learning and Development offer

*T&C's apply based on contract

We are committed to being an inclusive employer and cultivating a culture where everyone can belong and thrive through inclusion and connectivity. We want our workforce to be reflective of the communities we work with, and for equality, diversity and inclusion to be embedded in everything we do. We are a Disability Confident Leader, are progressing our ambition to be an anti-racist organisation with Anti-Racism Commitments and actions in place and have networks for colleagues who are disabled, LGBT+, Black and Minoritised Ethnic and Women. We particularly encourage applications from Black and Minoritised Ethnic and/or disabled candidates who are currently underrepresented in our workforce. For disabled applicants, we offer reasonable adjustments throughout the recruitment process.

Reference number:22847
Job Title:Healthy Family Support Practitioner
Location:Colchester
Locality:North Essex
Contract type:Permanent
Hours:30
Salary:£26,003.00 (FTE) £21,083.51 (Pro Rata)
Closing Date:1 May 2026

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