Our Welfare Officers provide direct and impactful welfare support to RAF personnel and their immediate family. As a trusted and confidential source of support, you will assist our service users with challenges they are facing, from mental ill-health, difficult relationships, domestic abuse, financial and cost-of-living concerns, resettlement, housing, childcare, equality issues, bereavement, military discharge or deployment and many more - no day will be the same, as such this is a great opportunity to develop your knowledge and skills within the Welfare sector.
Our intervention is provided with consent on a non-statutory basis, and you will work with and engage our service users to develop appropriate interventions for individual outcomes.
Our service is transitioning to become more accessible and inclusive, digital technology plays a key role in this, as such you will use digital technologies to complement and enhance processes and service user experience.
You will play an active role within the community, promoting the service through the delivery of presentations and representing the service at public engagement events. You will also work closely with RAF welfare teams, local authorities, health, education, civilian agencies, charities and other military organisations to ensure the best outcome for the service user.
About the Team
2024 marks 34 years since SSAFA began delivering an independent non-statutory, and confidential service, for the Royal Air Force community across the UK, and this is an exciting time to be joining as we were recently successful in our bid to continue delivering this service.
We are transforming our ways of working to be innovative, to ensure our service is even more inclusive and accessible to meet the needs of a modern RAF.
As part of this transition, we are recruiting to several Welfare Officer vacancies across the UK, including apprenticeship opportunities which will be advertised in due course.
We are a hard-working team from diverse professional backgrounds. Although we all have our own area of responsibility, we support each other in delivering the best possible service to our military community.
Find out more about the 34 year history of the Service Personal Support & Social Work Service.
About you
To thrive in this role you will have relevant experience of supporting adults, families and children/young people. You will be able to take a flexible and creative approach to problem solving. You will have excellent communication skills and be able to deliver presentations with confidence.
You will have used Microsoft Office 365 to a high standard. It is important that you have experience of planning and managing your own workload, with minimal supervision.
It would be advantageous if you have experience of carrying out assessments, preparing plans, monitoring and reviewing outcomes.
There will be some travel required and therefore you will need to be able to drive and have access to your own car.
About SSAFA
SSAFA, the Armed Forces charity is a trusted source of support for serving personnel, veterans and their families in their time of need. In 2022 our trained teams of volunteers and employees helped more than 59,000 people, including veterans, serving personnel (regulars and reserves) and their families.
SSAFA understands that behind every uniform is a person. And we are here for that person and their family, any time they need us and in any way, they need us.
Diversity and Inclusion at SSAFA
SSAFA exists to support a diverse range of beneficiaries within the armed forces community, and we believe diversity within our teams is key to ensuring we can deliver our services effectively. We thrive on differences and believe it is critical to our success as a worldwide charity. SSAFA is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace that seeks to recruit, develop and retain the most talented people from a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and skills. We therefore encourage applications from all genders, races, religions, ages and sexual orientations, as well as parents, veterans, people living with disabilities, and any other groups that could bring diverse perspectives to our business.
SSAFA is committed to using the Disclosure & Barring Service to ensure we, as an employer, safeguard those we serve.
No agencies please. Any unsolicited submissions from agencies will be accepted as a direct application from the candidate and no fees will be payable.
Closing date: Midnight on 12 May 2024. SSAFA reserves the right to close the vacancy early if we receive a high volume of suitable applications.
Interviews: TBC.
You will provide support to our Cost-of-Living Crisis Clinic Consultant to co-ordinate the efficient service delivery of our busy Cost-of-Living Crisis Clinics, used by clients who need assistance to make successful applications for: welfare benefits; social housing; lower utility and broadband tariffs; and crisis and general grants. You will work with a wide range of people internally and externally, providing support and supervision to volunteer advisers and helping clients.
You will be a confident communicator who will have the right blend and balance of strong administration skills with excellent interpersonal and customer-facing skills and legal knowledge, working for a charity supporting and enhancing the lives of people in the local community.
This role is central to Westway Trust’s commitment to deliver activities and events to the benefit of the North Kensington community. You will also work from and help to co-ordinate the delivery of our Cost-of-Living Crisis Clinic at our outreach site, St Luke’s Community Centre, EC1V.
Key responsibilities of the role include but not limited to:
General Duties
- Being the initial point of contact; receiving calls and emails from clients and referring agencies, , and booking client appointments in an efficient and timely manner
- Setting up and clearing away after Cost-of-Living Crisis Clinic sessions, (currently, Tuesdays, at St Luke’s Community Centre, 90 Central Street, Islington, EC1, and Wednesdays at Westway Trust, 1 Thorpe Close, Ladbroke Grove, W10). Sessions start at 9.00am and finish around 1.00pm
- Meeting, greeting and orienting (showing where the facilities are and H&S guidance) clients and volunteers
- Triaging clients on to our database and referring clients who are out of scope to other relevant organisations
- Assisting clients to complete online and paper forms both face-to-face and remotely
- Liaising in a positive manner with our stakeholders, eg. clients, other teams within Westway Trust, our funder, a City Law firm, and our hosts, Westway Trust and St Luke’s Community Centre
- Responsibility for monitoring our work, completing simple reports, writing case studies, making sure volunteers complete their data entry after advising clients, and running case management statistics using AdvicePro, our case management system) (training on AdvicePro will be provided)
- Recruiting, inducting, training and supervising volunteers both corporate (from the City) and lay (students and local residents)
- Casework; writing up case notes about clients helped
- Attending relevant meetings and training and keeping resources up-to-date
- General administration including: photocopying, scanning and record keeping, and coordinating the general day-to-day activities of the Cost-of-Living Crisis Clinics
- Effectively contributing to make our Cost-of-Living Crisis Clinics high performing in line with the values of Westway Trust
Appeals & Representation Duties
Responsibility for our legal appeals representation service, including:
- Triaging clients, including reading appellant’s hearing bundles to assess the merits of their case
- Case management of appellants’' appeal cases, (ie, smooth management of appellants' cases from inception to post-hearing)
- Attending hearings
- Guiding and case managing lawyers/law students on applications for leave to appeal/set aside to the Upper Tribunal/Judiciary, (from the Lower Tribunal). Full training will be given
Qualifications: You will have or be working towards a law degree or equivalent.
Knowledge and Experience:
- A good understanding of the law in any jurisdiction
- Experience of providing an efficient, customer focused service, with a personable and collaborative approach and ability to provide, develop and maintaining friendly positive relationships with customers, staff, volunteers and other stakeholders
- Good time management and organisational skills
- Excellent administrative skills
- High level of IT skills. Experience of using Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint and database software (we use AdvicePro)
Personal Skills:
- Good people management/awareness skills
- Good communication and presentation skills, orally and in writing.
- Ability to work independently and on own initiative with minimum supervision
- Ability to work as part of a team in a multi-cultural and diverse environment
- An inquisitive mind and good problem solver
- Interest in civil law
- Good memory and research skills
- Demonstrable understanding and commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion
Connections to/understanding of North Kensington or the surrounding area is highly desirable
We exist to work together with the local community to enable North Kensington to thrive.
The client requests no contact from agencies or media sales.