FDAC Family Practitioner
Team: Family Drug and Alcohol Court (FDAC) Team
Job Family: Supporting – CBG8
Salary: £31,022 – £33,851 per annum
Contract: Hybrid – Permanent
Hours: 37 hours per week
Location: You will be expected to attend Highfield House, The Hawthorns, Flitwick, MK45 1FN as often as needed to carry out your role.
Closing Date: 30th April 2026
Interview Date: 12th May 2026
About the team
The Family Drug and Alcohol Court (FDAC) is an alternative, more successful form of care proceedings, where parental substance misuse is a concern. It uses a bespoke, problem-solving, trauma informed approach to target individual families’ complex difficulties. Research shows that this model is successful in supporting parents to engage with and stay in substance misuse services leading to more children being able to return home. Where parents do not engage and children cannot return home safely, quicker decisions are made about permanent placements for them.
The Bedfordshire FDAC works across the three Bedfordshire Local Authorities – Luton, Central Bedfordshire and Bedford. The lead and recruiting Local Authority is Central Bedfordshire Council. The successful applicant will be employed by Central Bedfordshire Council, within the FDAC team and work across Bedfordshire. The FDAC specialist multidisciplinary team is made up of a Team Manager, Clinical Psychologist, Clinical Psychiatrist, Senior Practitioner Social Workers, a Parental Substance Misuse Specialist, a Domestic Abuse Expert, Primary Mental Health Worker and Business Support Officer.
About the role
In this role, you will:
- Contribute to the multidisciplinary assessment, formulation and planning of intervention for FDAC parents.
- Support the FDAC initial assessment process.
- Arrange and communicate substance screening schedules.
- Complete substance screening with parents. This involves urine and saliva testing for which you would receive training.
- Read information such as court bundles and GP records, identify and record information relevant to informing assessment.
- Be trained to develop the ability to undertake and write the substance misuse part of the FDAC initial assessment.
- Support with one-to-one and small group activity, as appropriate to addressing identified need.
- Take a safeguarding and multi-agency approach.
- Attend court with the FDAC team to support parents, substance screen and to take minutes for the non lawyer reviews.
- Work directly with FDAC parents, providing effective and first-class intervention.
- Access clinical supervision from the FDAC Clinical Psychologist.
Work will be completed with parents in the context of Care proceedings, with assessment and intervention being focused on supporting parents to address the difficulties that led to Care proceedings being issued. This is parent, rather than patient, focused work which is child centred. You will work as part of a team to provide a safe space for parents to address their difficulties, achieve abstinence and become able to focus on their child and address the concerns about their parenting. You would support parents to start on their recovery journey, encouraging them at initial assessment to invest in recovery with open engagement to enable an effective individual intervention plan to be put in place.
You would be part of a specialist team making important and key recommendations for parents and children. Working with parents your role will be to contribute to every child being able to grow up safely and reach their full potential. As a member of a multi-disciplinary team, yours and your colleagues’ practice would be enriched through collaborative support of each other and learning from each other’s specialisms.
The successful applicant for the FDAC Family Practitioner role will have experience of substance recovery work and/or work in Children’s Services. You will be a good team player and be equally capable of individual practice. You will have a driving licence, access to a car during working hours and business insurance.
Join the FDAC team and you’ll enjoy regular working hours, attractive benefits, plus excellent training. This includes specialist courses covering specific areas of interest. Even better, you’ll develop a new level of specialism as you provide a bespoke, problem-solving approach to target individual families’ complex difficulties.
Our Offer
We have a number of rewards and benefits available to our staff, to view these please visit our Rewards and Benefits page
Our aspiration is to be a truly flexible employer. We welcome discussion on location, hours and working pattern as part of the application process.
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You will be expected to demonstrate how you meet the key accountabilities and competencies in this Recruitment Pack.
Our Competency Framework and Qualification Guidance are to be read in conjunction with our Recruitment Pack.
For an informal discussion about this position, please contact: Beverley Sorensen at Beverley.Sorensen@panbedsFDAC.co.uk or call 07748 885778.
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Safeguarding:
Central Bedfordshire Council is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults and expects all employees, volunteers and contractors to share this commitment. This post is subject to the disclosure of criminal records.
To maintain a fair and consistent approach for applicants, it is Central Bedfordshire Council’s policy to only consider applications made via our online application system and we therefore thank you for not submitting your application offline.
Our National Careers Service team offer a free monthly workshop covering CV writing and how to complete the statement sections of the Central Bedfordshire Council online application form. This MS Teams workshop is open to anyone from the UK and lasts around 1.5 hours. Please book your place here.
More information about this service can be found here: Support getting into work or learning | Central Bedfordshire Council
Please note we are unable to offer sponsorship for our roles. Successful applicants that may require a visa will need to consider the options for obtaining and/or maintaining the legal right to live and work in the UK. Please confirm you have right to work in the UK.
