Bexley is an outer London Borough with the best of both worlds, located between the hustle and bustle of London and the Garden of England, Kent. Within the borough we have award winning parks, open spaces and listed heritage sites.  

The Portage team is a small team working with infants and young children who have complex special educational needs and disabilities, and their families, within both the home and early years contexts. The team is based at Bexley Civic Offices (within the Early Intervention and Specialist Advice Service, EISAS) and works with families across the whole of Bexley. 

The team works closely with all of the professionals who work at the Child Development Centre, as well as those working in Early Years services across Bexley. The team sits within a large, multi-professional team where there are regular opportunities for joint working. 

The Portage team is a highly valued team across Bexley and consistently receives excellent feedback from those it works with. It is currently rated as 5* by the National Portage Association.  

We are looking to appoint a motivated, hard-working and empathetic individual to take on the role of home teaching worker. You must be able to work sensitively with families to enhance the development of their young children who have complex additional needs. 

We would welcome applications from people who have experience of working directly with young children and their families and have knowledge of children’s developmental needs, particularly those with complex special educational needs and disabilities. A teaching or childcare qualification would be desirable. 

Please refer to the Job Description attached for more information. 

For an informal discussion about the role please contact Jenny Swindells, Senior Educational Psychologist, jenny.swindells@bexley.gov.uk 02030454704 or Kelly Wilkinson, Senior Portage Worker, kelly.wilkinson@bexley.gov.uk 07815584407.  

We will offer you in return a package that includes a competitive salary, an excellent pension scheme and generous annual leave plus bank holidays. For more information on the benefits package on offer please refer to the Candidate Information document attached. 

We reserve the right to close adverts earlier than the closing date. 

You would need to have the ability to work as a member of a team, as well as independently, to produce accurate reports to timescales and to manage a multi-faceted workload effectively. 

Completion of the National Portage Workshop training would be desirable. 

For the full list of essential and desirable criteria for this role then please refer to the Person Specification within the Job Description attached. 

Appointment to this post will be subject to the outcome of an Enhanced Disclosure obtained through the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS). 

This authority is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people and vulnerable adults and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment. 

This post is considered by the authority to be a customer-facing position; as such it falls within scope of the Code of Practice on English language requirement for public sector workers. The council therefore has a statutory duty under Part 7 of the Immigration Act 2016 to ensure that post holders have a command of spoken English sufficient for the effective performance of the job requirements. The appropriate standards are set out in the JD/Person Specification. These will be applied during the recruitment/selection and probationary stages.     

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Additional Information 

As a disability confident employer Bexley welcomes applications from people with all disabilities, including hidden disabilities and mental health conditions. We will interview any disabled applicant who meets the minimum criteria. If you require reasonable adjustments to be made to any part of the recruitment process due to your disability, please contact us on  recruitment@bexley.gov.uk