Resources Finance Officer (Scale 6)

Job Title : Resources Finance Officer (Scale 6)
Job Category : Financial
Location : London Borough of Hillingdon
Hours Per Week : 36.00
Start Date : 16/08/2021
Start Time : 09:00
End Time : 17:00
Salary: £18.00

At present the team has 7 members of staff including the team leaders. The team includes

2 staff members are part time (one works four days a week and the other 6 hours a day)
1 is an apprentice and only works 2 days
3 staff members work full time
1 Team leader
The CRF team administers financial support Looked After Children for Asylum Seekers, Care Leavers, and Children In Need with a core focus on the systems administration and processing 941 weekly Bank, PFS and Bops payments. In addition to the weekly payments the team process about 150 one off payments per week which includes the issuing off petty cash and cheques. The team is also responsible for setting up Setting up rent accounts for Asylum care leavers and section 17 families. The apprentice who has was processing asylum weekly/monthly stats is longer able to do this task as he is now supporting another team. The team monitors Junior ISA/Trust funds for all looked and care leavers and the grant claim for 299 asylum clients. Care packages/placements in Art support trays for providers and payments are administered across the team but primarily by 1.5 FTE staff members.
Local Authorities across the board have seen an increase of approximately 80% in the cost of children’s packages during the pandemic. This has been caused by provider price increases combined with a surge in referrals.
Covid has resulted in an increase in the number of domestic abuse referrals, new-born children presenting in care proceeding, new UASC arrivals and increases in young people self-harming. The corresponding increase in demand for children’s social care services and support has impacted heavily upon the CRF team responsible for the financial administration of the packages and placements.
Demand for provision is expected to increase further as support services begin to resume following the pandemic with a backlog of cases relating to children unable to access support services, now with more complex and challenging needs, expected to emerge.

This request for agency resource is made to enable the CRF Officers to continue to support the increased demand for Children’s social care packages and placements fulling the statutory obligations of the authority and also facilitating provider payments thereby avoiding any potential risks to continuity of provision. Also, to avoid the risk of inputting and providing inaccurate data.

EXPERIENCE
Experience of working on financial systems
Experience of working within a Children’s Service environment
Experience of providing advice and guidance in a customer service setting