The Growth Company's Employment team have an exciting opportunity for a Finance, Benefit and Debt Adviser (FBD) who will deliver high performance levels, compliant activity and customer service standards on the CRS Finance, Benefit and Debt (FBD) service and support the Service Manager to ensure that service and business objectives are achieved.
We help to make a lasting difference to the lives of people throughout the North of England and beyond, by supporting individuals to gain meaningful employment. Our highly skilled advisers and keyworkers work with a range of individuals; from people who have found themselves recently out of work, to those with complex barriers such as physical disabilities, mental ill-health and debt.
Key Responsibilities:
* Working with a caseload of participants, in both the community and Prison settings, to progress them on their journey towards accessing benefits, inclusive of adhering to the responsibilities for making claims.
* Resolving debt issues, including the establishment of debt and rent repayment plans.
* Supporting and acting as liaison between appropriate parties, such as landlords, utility suppliers, phone contractors and other creditors, banks, credit unions, and so on.
* Building strong and positive relationships with participants, enabling them to make well-informed choices and to appropriately assess sources of support, leading to the joint development of an action plan of supportive interventions.
* Being responsible for following up on service user actions to ensure that timely progress is made with these, e.g., making repayments or responding to correspondence.
* Liaising with National Probation Service officers, and completing all associated recording of these interactions, tracking and management information details, as directed, accurately and on a timely basis.
* Promoting the additional choices available to service users, for example third sector support (food banks, credit unions etc).
* Demonstrating individualised engagement and motivational skills appropriate for each participant.
* Ensuring that all required data entry to the relevant digital applications is accurate and compliant, and that documentation relating to the participant is completed and maintained in an accurate, compliant, timely and respectful manner.
About you:
* Ideally to have experience working in training, advice & guidance, and counselling environments.
* Working with current offenders or marginalised groups.
* Working to targets.
* Excellent knowledge of the local labour market, methods of recruitment and awareness of growth industries.
* Good knowledge of welfare-to-work and its customer base.
* Knowledge of guidance and national standards.
* Good rapport-building skills.
* Professional and articulate.
* Flexible and adaptable.
Skills Required:
* Must have previous experience case loading or working with ex-offenders or the marginalised and demotivated.
* Sound grasp of the issues of debt and the issues that may cause individuals to mis-manage their personal finances or to breach their conditions for claiming DWP / Jobcentre Plus benefits.
* The ability to work under pressure in a high-performance environment.
* Strong personable approach when working with service users.
* Flexible approach to work, including a willingness to travel.
* Willingness to work occasional unsociable hours.
* Delivering services to service users who are still in custody, inclusive of attending prisons to work face-to-face.
We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of everyone including vulnerable adults and young people, we expect all staff to share this commitment. All appointments will be subject to Safer Recruitment Procedures which include a DBS check. This will be conducted by Due Diligence Limited (DDC Ltd) on behalf of GC. Please note that the successful candidate will not be required to pay for this.
If you are on the Barred List, it is against the law to apply and to be hired for a role that includes regulated activity with the concerned group.
We are committed to increasing the diversity of our workforce, we provide a guaranteed interview to applicants who meet the essential requirements for a role. This commitment applies to candidates who have a disability or are from a diverse ethnic community.
As part of our application process, you can ask to be considered under this scheme if you are from an ethnic community or have a physical or mental impairment that has a substantial and long-term negative effect on your ability to do normal daily activities. Providing that you meet the essential criteria for the role, you will then be invited for an interview. Your guaranteed interview application will only be shared with the Hiring Manager and our Internal Recruitment Team.
We are a member of the national campaign Ban the Box; this campaign aims to open opportunities for people with convictions to compete for jobs. We’re supporting the campaign by removing conviction questions at the applications stage.
GC aims to promote a culture of flexibility and agile working. Going forward we will be transitioning to a culture where full agile working will be a feature of many of our roles. We also recognise that there may be a need for more permanent flexibility in your working arrangements and in such cases, we encourage you to have these discussions at the interview stage, to enable your flexible working request to be considered as early as possible.
All GC colleagues will work inline with the Health & Safety at work act and the GC Health & Safety Policy