The Senior Homeless Support Officer will report to the Homeless Support Service Manager and support the HSS staff and volunteers, helping rough sleepers and those vulnerable or at risk of eviction access housing opportunities and other necessary support. As a Homeless Support Officer, you will be responsible for assessing clients’ needs and producing and delivering effective support plans to find solutions to clients' presenting needs. We are looking for a highly motivated individual who can hit the ground running and work to ensure that we positively impact our clients’ lives and achieve positive results.
A full training programme will be given to the successful candidate.
Main Duties
1. Work with clients who have complex needs to identify their personal aims and ambitions and work towards achieving them. This entails assessing clients’ needs, advising them of their rights, producing support plans, and resolving their issues. For clients seeking services outside of the Rainbow Centre offering, you will be expected to make referrals to specialist organisations and services, follow up and ensure that clients receive the help they need.
2. Assist clients in securing housing options and offer move-on outreach support for up to 3 months after securing housing.
3. Work as part of a dedicated team of staff and volunteers and share responsibility for meeting clients' practical needs. This involves:
1. Ensure that the breakfast club, run by volunteers, is well organised and that volunteers have the support to offer showers and postal and food parcels to clients.
2. Attend to the reception, responding to the intercom and answering calls, in the absence of volunteers.
3. Ensure that the service has adequate volunteers and is available to support volunteers and help them resolve queries to support a smooth service.
4. Maintain the HSS database by monitoring and logging clients' records and activities on the HSS database, taking full ownership of the administrative records relating to your client caseload in our In-Form database.
5. Help develop and support a befriending scheme.
About You
To be successful, you will have:
Knowledge
1. Good standard of education with excellent literacy and communication skills (Essential)
2. Good interpersonal and listening skills, to establish an effective working relationship with clients and an enthusiasm to learn and work with clients with a holistic and person-centred approach (Essential)
3. Good administration skills, including competence in Microsoft Office applications (Essential)
4. Work well within a team (Essential)
5. Possess people skills, alongside empathy and understanding for the clients we work with (Essential)
6. Ability to multi-task, working collaboratively within a small staff and volunteer team (Essential)
7. Adaptability, flexibility and use of own initiative are essential (Essential)
8. Professional attitude when representing the organisation to other partners and stakeholders (Essential)
9. Self-motivated with the ability to manage own workload and embrace new initiatives proactively (Desirable)
10. Organised and experienced in using a database (Essential)
11. An understanding and empathy with the Christian ethos of honesty, trust and respect (Essential)
Experience
1. Ability to work in close partnership with external agencies and effectively liaise with a range of service providers or agencies to establish or improve client services (Essential)
2. Ability to be self-motivating, work under pressure, and manage time effectively, prioritising different work areas according to need (Essential)
3. An understanding of working in homeless support services, with a demonstrable knowledge of Housing and other related legislation or willingness to be trained (Essential)
4. Experience in completing assessments and producing planned co-produced support plans focused on setting and achieving goals (Desirable)
Above all, we are looking for an inspirational individual who genuinely desires to support people in transforming their lives and is committed.
Work within the Rainbow Centre's policies and practices, especially those relating to adult safeguarding, data protection legislation, and good practice. This post requires a DBS check.
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