Academic Caseworker Jobs in Kirklees, West Midlands

Why Access Social Care Exists 

Every day millions of older and disabled people are denied the social care they need. Most local authorities can’t meet the growing demand for care, and none are confident they can meet their legal duties in the future. This affects all of us - we will all need social care at some point in our lives.

We all have a right to hold public bodies to account, but most of us cannot afford lawyers so rely on legal aid. The 92% drop in legal aid cases since 2010 means that we have nowhere to turn. Without access to justice, our rights do not exist. The rule of law is broken.   

What we do 

Access Social Care provides free legal advice and information for people with social care needs, helping achieve a better quality of life. We work with communities to increase knowledge of the law and our rights. We highlight the gap left by cuts to Legal Aid and provide advice for those who can’t afford it.

With a 98% success rate, our network of lawyers provide access to justice when things go wrong. We collaborate with social services whilst ensuring legal obligations are met. We are working towards a future where social care is adequately funded and we all get the support we need.   

We provide rights awareness training to front line managers, and legal advice and support to families and individuals. As well as providing access to justice, our aim is to drive system level change through evidence-led influencing and strategic casework. We operate our casework service mainly under a membership model where organisations involved in the social care sector contract with Access Social Care to provide legal assistance to their clients.

This is an exciting time to join ASC. We have a new strategy and are growing quickly. We have more than doubled in size and income since we started operating in April 2020 and we anticipate that this strong growth will continue for the duration of our next strategic period. We are dedicated to the people who need our help, but we also care deeply about our team, and we think that work should be an exciting and satisfying place to be.

About the role

As we move into 2024, Access Social Care is launching a new workstream aimed at training more experts in community care law. To achieve our aims, we will be developing learning and development programmes for internal and external use. We are looking for an experienced learning and development professional to lead this programme of work.

 We want you to:

• Oversee the development and delivery online and in person training on the Care Act 2014 and associated legislation, regulations, guidance and caselaw.  We already have some training materials in-house, but you will need to expand and develop these for different audiences (carers, social care providers, advocates, advisers and caseworkers).
• Work with external stakeholders at academic institutions to develop degree/diploma level learning modules.
• Work closely with others at ASC and play a key role in developing the skills and knowledge of our trainee caseworkers and other new staff.
• Work alongside the Head of Business Development to develop a learning and development income stream.

Responsibilities

1. Project management of the Access Social Care learning and development offer: Working with internal and external stakeholders and using project management tools and software you will drive the project forwards ensuring milestones and deadlines are met, delivering reports 

2. Content and resources development: Work closely with our Head of Digital Content, Product Manager and legal team members to develop training materials for use online and in person on the Care Act which enable people with different starting points to understand the rights of social care users, to enforce those rights, and to understand the responsibilities of social care providers and local authorities.

3. External training strategy development. Work with the Head of Business development to develop an income stream from learning and development.

4. Training delivery: Deliver training internally and externally, online and in person, using a variety of training techniques, and tailored materials to engage different audiences with different immediate purposes.

5. Intelligence gathering: Contribute to our understanding of systemic problems in the social care and community care law systems, feeding back to legal colleagues' issues that are brought up in training session.

6. General tasks: Undertake such other tasks as may reasonably be required or asked of you in order to respond to organisational needs and specifically needs within the legal team.

This list of tasks is not exhaustive and will be reviewed from time to time in discussion with the post holder.

For full details on this role please see attached job discription.

How to apply 

We hope that having read this far; you still want to apply!

Please ensure that your CV and supporting statement do not include your name – use initials only. This will ensure that we avoid unconscious bias in our shortlisting process. To apply, please provide the following documents:

• An up-to-date CV
• A completed diversity monitoring form - linked in the full job discription attached.
• A supporting statement of no more than two pages, addressing why you meet the essential requirements of the person specification

If you want support applying, contact us.

Timeline for the recruitment process

Closing date:  23.59pm on Tuesday 23rd April 2024

Interviews: will be held virtually on MS Teams on Thursday 2nd May and Friday 3rd May 2024

Please ensure you keep these dates free.

At Access Social care, we aren’t interested in tokenism. We know that if we are to make the biggest difference for the people that need us the most, we need to get Equality, Diversity and Inclusion and anti-racism right. Part of this is recruiting greater diversity in all our teams. 

With this in mind, we particularly welcome applications from candidates with experience of the communities we serve, including people with direct experience of the social care system, and from marginalised groups, particularly Black, Asian and minority ethnic groups, older and disabled people, and trans and non-binary people.

To note we are only able to accept applicants with the right to work in the UK.