Senior Youth Support Worker

Are you looking for a new opportunity for 2025? 

Are you passionate about working with children and young people and supporting your colleagues to reach their full potential?

Are you enthusiastic about developing and coordinating excellent and inclusive services with young people to enhance their, wellbeing, happiness and opportunities?

Our new Partnership with the Co-op is an exciting innovative project where we aim to support over 750k young people, aged 10-25 years across 2 years.

To deliver this, we are recruiting a Senior Youth Support Worker with both full-time and part-time opportunities available across 20 locations.

Location of this post: Brent

Initially, you will be working alongside Barnardo's colleagues and young people in the local area and supporting the Children's Service Manager to design and kick start the brand new co-designed service. This is an exciting and varied role that will evolve as the service develops.  

Our Barnardo's Co-op Partnership goals are:

• Improve mental wellbeing
• Improve access to basic needs (food)
• Improve access to opportunities

We are looking for applicants who are:

• Experienced in overseeing and supporting the work of staff and volunteers in developing and delivering services to young people.
• Confident and creative in coordinating services that engage and work alongside young people aged between 10-25 years.
• Skilled in designing and delivering groupwork sessions for young people.
• Able to provide emotional and practical support to young people, with experience of applying safeguarding policies and procedures.
• Flexible to work evenings and weekends where required to meet the needs of the service.
• Able to develop and maintain positive working relationships with Co-op, Children's Services and the community, whilst keeping young people at the centre of all that we do.

In return for your commitment, you will be supported with meaningful and supportive 1:1's, ongoing personal development and opportunities to make positive change in young people's lives.

Our Co-op partnership Youth Advisory Group have made this film to support in recruiting the right staff for our in Community services across the UK (link below):

Barnardo's | Recruitment of Staff for Co-op Partnership by the Youth Advisory Group (youtube.com)

Although this contract has a permanent status, please be aware that this post is subject to funding currently to 31 March 2026 and therefore should this funding not be extended further, you may be subject to a redundancy consultation or a TUPE arrangement. This contract is due to expire on 31 March 2026.

When completing your application please refer to your skills knowledge and experience in relation to the Person Specification, Job Description and Additional Information document. 

For more information on our exciting partnership with the Co-op, please see our additional information sheet via the link below.

For an informal chat about the role, please contact Robyn Dunn on robyn.dunn@barnardos.org.uk South East and London Children's Service Manager

Please note that this job role is advertised at part time hours however, we are open to negotiating hours that are mutually agreeable.

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 1st April 2023. This is a positive change for the charity, and a key pillar of our People & Culture Strategy. It will assist us in supporting colleagues to grow and develop in their career at Barnardo's as it will offer clear routes of progression for colleagues to progress through the pay band of their role.

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 progression 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

The world of work has changed. We are understanding of what works best for our colleagues both current and future as we look to embrace this new way of working. 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, at one of our Collaboration Hubs or any combination of these.

• 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.
• 26 days annual leave plus bank holidays, increasing after 5 years service
• The ability to buy up to another 5 days annual leave via our HolidayPlus 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

At Barnardo's we are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and we expect all staff and volunteers to share in this commitment.  Our safer recruitment processes mean that the safety and welfare of the child is paramount at every stage of the process and therefore, we adopt rigorous scrutiny in our pre-employment checking. This post is subject to a range of pre-employment checks including a Criminal Records Enhanced Disclosure for the successful candidate.

At Barnardo's we believe in children – no matter who they are, what they have done or what they have been through. Please read about our basis and values following the link below. You will be asked questions relating to them as part of the recruitment process for this role.

Our commitment to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) is reflected in our values and our practice, and we have invested in this area of our work to ensure that we can deliver on our commitments to be an inclusive employer. EDI is a key enabler of our purpose as a charity and we want to ensure that the diversity of our teams is reflective of the communities we serve and that we continue to learn and develop our work with a focus on inclusion. We particularly encourage applications from candidates from Black, Asian and Minoritised Ethnic Communities, candidates who are LGBT+ and Disabled candidates. 

Our basis and values