Residential Support Worker

Organisation	Maar Haven Ltd
Location	Corby, Northamptonshire
Reporting to	Team Leader / Deputy Registered Manager
Salary	£24,000 – £26,500 per annum, top quartile for the East Midlands region
Contract	Full-time and part-time permanent positions available
Working pattern	Long-day shift (07:00–21:30) and waking night (21:00–08:00) on a rolling rota. Weekend working expected.
Qualifications funded	Level 3 Diploma in Residential Childcare funded from day one for all new starters who do not yet hold it

About Maar Haven

Maar Haven is an independently owned children’s residential care organisation based in Corby, Northamptonshire, with the ambition of building one of England’s most therapeutically excellent and consistently Outstanding-rated providers.

Founded by Joseph and Faith Bvumbe, a qualified mental health nurse with direct adolescent, SEND, and forensic youth experience, and an operational director managing a regulated care enterprise currently employing over 130 staff, Maar Haven begins from a foundation of genuine expertise, not aspiration.

Our therapeutic model is built on Dyadic Developmental Practice (DDP/PACE), the Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics (NMT), and a whole-home culture in which trauma-informed thinking shapes every shift, every relationship, and every decision. We do not claim to be trauma-informed. We are building an organisation that is trauma-organised.

Everything in this organisation flows from five core values: Presence, Belief, Integrity, Interdependence, and Continuity. They are not framing. They are the mechanism by which every decision, from a 2am crisis response to a board-level governance review, is made and judged.

PRESENCE The relationship is the work.

BELIEF Every young person is capable of a meaningful future.

INTEGRITY We do things properly when no one is checking, including in safeguarding.

INTERDEPENDENCE Children do not recover alone. Neither do the adults who care for them.

CONTINUITY We do not end when the placement ends.

If you are looking for a quiet, unambitious role in a comfortable organisation, this is not it. If you want to be part of building something genuinely excellent, and you have the skills, values, and drive to contribute to that, we want to hear from you.

Role Purpose

The Residential Support Worker is the most important role in a children’s home. Not the most senior, the most important.

The RI shapes governance. The RM shapes culture. But the RSW is the person who is actually in the kitchen at 7am when a child hasn’t slept. They are the adult who sits beside a young person during a hard moment, who notices when something has shifted, who holds a story day by day and builds trust through sheer consistency. That is not a supporting role. That is the work.

At Maar Haven, RSWs are treated as the skilled, specialist practitioners they are. We fund your qualifications. We pay above the market rate. We give you clinical supervision, reflective practice, and a therapeutic framework that makes sense of the work. We invest in your wellbeing, because the quality of care a child receives is directly connected to how supported the adult providing it feels. In return, we expect genuine professional commitment.

How the Five Values show up in this role Presence: You are the Presence value made real. The consistent, warm, non-contingent adult who is here regardless of how difficult the day is. Belief: You hold and communicate belief in young people’s futures, in how you speak about them in handover, in how you write about them in records, and in how you speak with them directly. Integrity: Your records are completed during the shift. Your safeguarding concerns are raised the shift they arise. You do not wait to be watched. Interdependence: You do not hold the work alone, you ask for support, you offer it to colleagues, and you understand that the team’s health is connected to your own. Continuity: You hold your key worker relationships with the understanding that this young person may have experienced many endings. You are the counter-offer.

A note on the Young People’s Values Maar Haven’s core values exist in a second form, a plain-language version written directly to the young people who live in our homes. When a new young person arrives, they are given this version on their first day. It says, in language a 13-year-old can understand: who we are, what we believe about them, and what they can expect from us. As an RSW, you are expected to know this document, to talk about it with the young people you support, and to live up to what it promises. If they ever ask whether we mean it, the answer is in how you show up every shift.

Key Responsibilities

Daily Care and Therapeutic Relationships

• Provide skilled, consistent residential care to children aged 8–17 with complex developmental trauma, EBD, SEND, or dual diagnosis presentations
• Apply the PACE framework as the consistent relational stance in every interaction, not as a technique, but as a way of being that shapes every conversation, every mealtime, every bedtime
• Hold a key worker role for one or more children, maintaining regular documented key work sessions, minimum three per week per child, focused on the child’s individual needs and therapeutic goals
• Support children’s family contact in line with care plans, facilitating what is planned, recording what happens, and raising concerns where contact is causing harm rather than supporting recovery

Safeguarding

• Identify and respond to safeguarding concerns in real time, including disclosures, contextual risks, and behavioural indicators that may signal harm
• Report and document all concerns during the shift in which they arise, accurately, contemporaneously, and in specific observable language
• Never promise a child confidentiality you cannot keep. Be honest about what you will do with what they share. This is not a rule to follow, it is a form of respect.
• Apply contextual safeguarding principles: notice and name peer group dynamics, online risks, and community factors that may affect a child’s safety
• Understand that making a safeguarding referral is an act of professional courage that this organisation will always support

Your Own Wellbeing

• Take your own wellbeing seriously as a professional responsibility, not just a personal one, because the quality of care you provide is connected to how you are
• Attend monthly reflective supervision and bring honest observations, not just safe answers, this is a space designed to support you, not to assess you
• Access the Therapeutic Consultant’s staff-facing support when you need it: this is what it is there for
• Tell your Team Leader or Deputy when you are struggling, before it affects the children, not after. Asking for support is a professional act.
• Protect yourself from compassion fatigue: maintain life outside the home, rest between shifts, and notice when you are running low

Documentation and Records

• Complete daily logs, incident reports, and key work session notes within the shift or, at the latest, before leaving the building, records completed the following day are not adequate
• Write in specific, observable language, not ‘young person was upset’ but what you saw, heard, and how you responded
• Understand that your records are a safeguarding document, a clinical record, and a legal document simultaneously, and treat them accordingly
• Contribute to care plan reviews with written observations and relationship-based insight: your direct, sustained knowledge of a child is irreplaceable

Leadership & Accountability

Every RSW at Maar Haven is accountable for the quality of their own practice. You are accountable as a professional: for the accuracy of your records, the quality of your relationships, the standard of your therapeutic practice, and your willingness to ask for support when you need it.

This means: if you observe something concerning, you name it. If a record is inaccurate, you correct it. If you are struggling, you ask for support. The RSW who is too proud or too uncomfortable to ask for help is a risk. The RSW who raises a concern without hesitation is a practitioner we trust.

Person Specification

Qualifications

• Level 3 Diploma in Residential Childcare, desirable; fully funded from day one if not yet held
• If unqualified: minimum 1 year of experience working with children or young people in a formal care, education, or community setting, essential
• Current enhanced DBS with children’s barred list check
• Safeguarding training to Level 2 minimum, Level 3 funded by Maar Haven within 6 months of appointment
• Full driving licence, desirable but not essential

Experience

• Experience of direct work with children or young people, whether in residential care, foster care, education, youth work, or community settings
• Experience of working with young people who display challenging behaviour or have experienced trauma, desirable
• Experience of completing written records or reports in a professional context, desirable

Values and Mindset, This Is the Most Important Section

• You believe that the children in our homes deserve the same quality of care, ambition, and investment that would be expected for any child
• You are genuinely curious about behaviour: your first instinct when a child pushes back is to wonder what they are communicating, not to decide they are being difficult
• You bring warmth that is not contingent on whether a child is likeable on a given day, and you understand that the children who are hardest to like often need warmth most
• You take your own wellbeing seriously as a professional responsibility, not just a personal preference
• You make safeguarding referrals without hesitation, and you expect this organisation to back you when you do
• You understand that good residential care is skilled work, and you approach it with professional pride
• You are honest: with children, with colleagues, with managers, and with yourself about where your practice needs to develop

What Makes This Role Different

Most residential care job adverts say they are looking for someone who is ‘caring and passionate.’ We are not writing that here. We are looking for skilled, reflective practitioners who understand that residential childcare is one of the most complex and important forms of social care there is, and who want to be excellent at it.

What you will receive at Maar Haven: your Level 3 funded from day one; pay in the top quartile for this region; monthly clinical supervision; a Therapeutic Consultant you can access for practice support; a Team Leader who will coach you in real time; and explicit investment in your wellbeing, because we believe that your capacity to be present for young people depends on whether anyone is being present for you.

Culture & Expectations

At Maar Haven, the RSW role is understood as the foundation of the therapeutic home. We protect that role from unnecessary bureaucracy, support it with clinical supervision, invest in its wellbeing, and pay it what it is worth. In return, we expect a level of professional commitment and relational quality that matches the seriousness of the work.

We do not tolerate poor documentation, unrecorded incidents, or relationships with children that cross professional boundaries. We do not tolerate these things because the children in our care have been harmed enough. They deserve better. And we believe you can provide it, which is why you are reading this.