The KidSTART programme provides upstream support to children from low-income families in the areas of early childhood development, health, and social support. As a KidSTART Practitioner, you will actively engage families and work closely with social / community partners and government agencies. Through home visits, you will support parents through delivery of a range of child development strategies, assess, and monitor their children’s health and development.
Responsibilities
As a KidSTART Practitioner, you will be expected to:
- Provide support, guidance, knowledge, and skills to enhance parents' capacity in nurturing child development through regular and consistent home visits.
- Possess sound assessment skills on the needs and risks of children / parents / caregivers to ascertain the intensity and customisation of intervention.
- Engage and cultivate a positive relationship with parents / caregivers to ensure that child development knowledge and skills are imparted effectively.
- Create and facilitate learning opportunities for parents in the areas of parent-child interaction, development-centred parenting, and family well-being.
- Motivate, assess, and enhance the parents' ability to conduct, practise and incorporate the knowledge and skills in child development.
- Conduct screening and ongoing assessment of child development, maternal and family wellbeing.
- Provide information and knowledge on medical, dental, mental health services, early childhood development, developmental issues, with support from a multi-disciplinary team comprising paediatricians and nurses, allied health professionals, early childhood and social work consultants.
- Collaborate and partner community and social service agencies (eg. FSCs, SSOs) to provide the necessary support for the families and their children, which includes regular case conferences and discussions.
- Participate actively and contribute to discussions in team meetings, supervision sessions, training, and multidisciplinary case reviews.
- Participate and be involved in the regular reviews of existing programmes and processes with the team.
- Committed to and participate in the evaluation and fidelity monitoring of service delivery through consistency in administrative work, provision of data and information on cases in a timely manner.
Job Requirements
- Degree in Social Work, Counselling, Psychology, Social Sciences, Early Childhood or equivalent.
- 3-5 years of work experience in the social service sector or early childhood development and familiar with the needs of low-income families.
- Fresh graduates will be considered too. Experience working with families and/or children through volunteer work is an added advantage.
- An excellent team player with good interpersonal and communication skills.
- Possesses a keen interest in parenting and child development.
- Proficiency in Microsoft Office.
- Strong organisational skills, with an ability to manage multiple projects and meet deadlines effectively.
- Good writing skills for case management and comfortable with data collation for reporting purposes.
- Passionate and committed to work with parents / caregivers and their children.
- Empathetic towards the needs and challenges of parents / caregivers.
- Capacity to reflect on key strengths and needs and motivated to enhance personal effectiveness and efficiency at work.
- Flexible, nimble, and able to adapt to organisational changes.
- Motivated towards learning and professional development.
- Willing and able to work on some weekday evenings and weekends.
