One YMCA's Family Support Services work alongside children, families and communities to give every child the best possible start in life. Through our Best Start Family Hubs and Family Centres, we provide accessible, inclusive and responsive support that helps families build resilience, strengthen relationships and improve outcomes for children. Our services focus on early intervention, reducing inequalities and ensuring families can access the support they need, when they need it.
About the Role: We are looking for a compassionate, proactive and experienced Best Start Inclusion Practitioner to join our Family Support Services team. This rewarding fixed-term role until March 2029 focuses on supporting families with children under five who have SEND, disabilities or emerging additional needs.
Working across Best Start Family Hubs, Family Centres and community settings, you will help families overcome barriers to accessing services, promote early identification and intervention, and ensure inclusive practice is embedded throughout our delivery. You will work directly with families, colleagues and partner agencies to create positive outcomes for children and support parents to build confidence in their child's development and learning.
As a Best Start Inclusion Practitioner, you will:
- Deliver inclusive universal and targeted support for families with children under five who have SEND, disabilities or emerging additional needs.
- Provide direct support through home visits, one-to-one interventions, outreach activities and group sessions.
- Promote early identification of developmental delays and additional needs, working closely with health, early years and SEND professionals.
- Support families to access services, navigate local pathways and manage key transitions such as starting nursery or school.
- Develop and deliver practical resources, workshops and activities that support parenting, child development and positive home learning environments.
About You!
You will have an NVQ Level 3 (or equivalent) in Early Years, Health, Social Care, Family Support or a related field, or relevant experience, along with experience supporting children with SEND, disabilities and/or additional needs. You'll have a good understanding of child development, safeguarding and multi-agency working, with excellent communication, organisational and IT skills. A full driving licence and the ability to travel across Hertfordshire are essential.
Experience of home visiting, delivering family support, additional SEND training, and knowledge of local SEND pathways and Family Hub services would be an advantage.
Apply Now! This is a fixed-term role until March 2029. If you're passionate about supporting children and families to achieve the best possible outcomes, we'd love to hear from you. Apply today to join our dedicated team and help make a real difference to the lives of families across Hertfordshire.
At One YMCA, we are an inclusive organisation and actively promote equality of opportunity for all with the right mix of talent, skills and potential. We do not discriminate on the basis of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, or sexual orientation. We encourage applications from all backgrounds, communities and industries and are committed to building a team with diverse skills, experiences and perspectives.
One YMCA and its subsidiaries, the Early Childhood Partnership (ECP) and Signpost are on an exciting journey to double our impact by 2025. We are over half way through an exciting new strategy launched in the first hour of the new decade, via email where all staff and volunteers were invited to put themselves forward to apply and attend an intensive, three-day Kickstarter Event.
By the end of these three days, there was a brilliantly multi-faceted set of themes and ideas, which formed the starting point for the rest of the Mission 25 process to build on. The aim of Mission 25 is to give every staff member and volunteer the opportunity to play their part in shaping the strategy to do “more and better, together” so that we double our impact by 2025. We deliver a vast array of services across Herts, Beds and Bucks that reach over 135,000 individuals annually.
