Sabera is a Team Manager, managing a Children in Care team for Bradford Children and Families Trust. She talked us through some of the unique challenges and rewards of supporting care-experienced children in one of the UK’s youngest cities.

Demographically speaking, Bradford has been called the youngest city in Europe, with around a quarter of its population aged 16 or under, which comes with a unique set of circumstances and challenges for social work practice. Sabera’s team focuses on children who are in care, helping to advocate for them and ensuring they find the right outcome to support their development, safety and stability.

“It’s a really multicultural population, there are a large number of children in our city, including children in care. That might be children in foster care or residential care. With some children the plan might be to go home, or to go to kinship carers, or the plan might be special guardianship. It’s a really busy, interesting and challenging place to work.”

In addition to her role in supporting Bradford’s children, as a manager Sabera provides reflective supervision and works alongside her team to help them to handle the complex and unique situations which crop up in frontline social work practice:

“We will work with children with more complex needs, where they have additional support needs, or the complexity comes from trauma. I’ve always got an open door policy for people to come in and talk, because we deal with situations that can take their toll, emotionally speaking. It’s really important to give everyone space to just talk things through.”

As with so much of social work practice, the rewards of the job are found in the relationship-building that is essential to working with children and young people:

“Even though a lot of these children have been through so much and have a lot of trauma, they still want that connection with you. To be able to understand where they’re coming from and have a bit of time for them. They’ve all got unique and different personalities, which is always interesting.”

As a manager, Sabera spends less time in frontline practice but still has the opportunity to interact with children directly. It’s also a source of professional pride to see her team working together, looking out for one another and achieving the best outcomes for the children they support:

“We’re a very supportive team, and I really enjoy that as well as seeing that drive and passion in the staff. They want the best outcomes for these children, and I love seeing that. I think we’re in social work to make a difference and seeing my team supporting each other is really important.”

For Sabera, having a stable and permanent workforce is a key part of fostering this type of camaraderie and mutual support. Sabera feels that permanent roles are fast becoming a more attractive option at the Trust:

“It’s about that consistency and commitment. By becoming permanent you’re investing in something and showing you want to be part of something. You get the support but also the opportunities to develop as a practitioner. You also get more flexibility with permanent roles now – I work condensed hours and that gives me a really good work-life balance.”

In Sabera’s experience across the profession, children’s social work matters because outcomes are everything, and children need professionals they can rely on:

“For me, it’s about keeping children safe, making sure they’re getting what they need and that they’re able to thrive. It’s about making sure they’re able to reach their full potential.”