To be the first point of contact within the Homelessness Prevention, Advice and Resettlement Team for customers and partner agencies. To actively make a positive and professional contribution in the provision of a comprehensive and efficient housing service and to provide a high quality housing advisory service and prevention of homelessness as set out in the Housing Act 1996. Your role is to: 1. To ensure the consistent implementation of the councils’ housing and homelessness duty to all households presenting as homeless or threatened with homelessness 2. Provide in-depth and personally tailored housing advice to a caseload of clients and maintain accurate, up-to-date records of all case files 3. Help clients reduce barriers preventing them from accessing and maintaining settled accommodation, including providing generic advice on income maximisation, benefits, debt, employment, recovering debts to the council etc and signposting to other agencies for further help where necessary 4. Prevent homelessness in accordance with the Homeless Reduction Act in creative ways, such as maintaining existing accommodation through negotiation with landlords, sourcing and proactively assisting clients into alternative accommodation, seeking assistance from other agencies when appropriate and promoting multi-agency initiatives in the prevention of homelessness in the area 5. Undertake homelessness investigations under Part VII of the Housing Act 1996, (as amended by the Homelessness Act 2002 and Homeless Reduction Act 2018. 7. To manage a caseload and ensure that individual applicants are kept fully appraised of progress with enquiries into their application 8. To develop and maintain an in-depth knowledge of relevant Housing legislation 9. To apply client confidentiality procedures to investigations undertaken 10. To develop, promote strong links and work in partnership with public bodies and other partners such as Adult and Children’s services, Probation, CMHT, Police, NHS and supported/housing providers and street outreach teams to identify help and assistance for vulnerable and complex clients. Refer to and co-ordinate with these agencies for delivery of support to clients and to assist sustains their tenancies 11. To provide an advice service to applicants seeking ownership or low cost home ownership 12. To respond to and initiate routine and non-routine correspondence with a wide range of agencies 13. To constructively participate in one-to-one supervision, case reviews and case conferences, employee appraisals and training sessions. 14. To have experience in conflict resolution. 15. To have professional curiosity to be able to gather information quickly and make a sound legal decision on someone’s homelessness application. Further Information For an informal conversation please contact Sarah Blinco, Triage and Assessment Team Leader, [email protected], 01929 557355 This is a full time role at 37 hours per week. This role is fixed term until 31 st October 2025. This post requires you to have access to sensitive information. It will be subject to a Basic Criminal Records Check. See our policy on the employment of ex-offenders. See our adult safeguarding policy. About Us We’re passionate about making Dorset a great place to live, work and visit. Working for us should be no exception. At Dorset Council we: provide more than 450 services to over 300,000 residents have ambitious aspirations are excited about our future care about Dorset and all the people who live here know that all roles make a difference and that our employees are key to our success You will: have access to a range of employee benefits be part of an organisation that supports each other to grow and succeed have access to range of training opportunities which will help with your personal development and career progression We are challenging ourselves to become a more diverse and inclusive organisation. We recognise that recruitment and inclusion of individuals with diverse skills, perspectives and backgrounds will bring real strength to the council and our communities. We have a commitment to equality and welcome applications from everyone. We are proud to be a Disability Confident Employer. We offer an interview to everyone who declares a disability and meets the essential criteria for the role. We are keen to make our interviews accessible. Let us know on your job application if you have a disability and need any reasonable adjustments. We also look for applicants who share our commitment to our behaviours. We will ask you to evidence when you have demonstrated them as part of the selection process. If appointed, the personal information we collect from you will be shared with Cifas who will use it to prevent fraud, other unlawful or dishonest conduct, malpractice, and other seriously improper conduct. If any of these are detected, you could be refused certain services or employment. Your personal information will also be used to verify your identity. Further details of how your information will be used by us and Cifas, and your data protection rights, can be found at https://www.cifas.org.uk/fpn. This role is UK based and we will need to establish your Right to Work as part of the appointment process. We use generic job descriptions and person specifications. This means the job title on any attachments may differ from the job title in the advert. We may provide specific information in a context statement if relevant. Find out more about how to apply .