Advocacy Jobs

£11,500 - £12,500 pro rata (full time equivalent of £23,000 - £25,000 pa)

Fixed Term Contract until 30th September 2024

Part-time – 17.5 hours a week

Swansea

Ref: CFC-231

Are you a driven and compassionate individual with excellent people skills? Do you have the skills and commitment to undertake a role that’s diverse and fast-paced? Then join St Giles as a Children & Families Caseworker and you will be embarking on a highly rewarding and career-enhancing position.

St Giles Trust is a Charity helping people facing severe disadvantage to find jobs, homes and the right support they need.  We help them to become positive contributors to local communities and wider society. We passionately believe everybody is capable of changing their lives. Our mission is we empower people to overcome injustices for themselves, their families and their local communities – we achieve this through offering support from someone who has been there. Our peer-led services form the backbone of our work. 

BACKGROUND: 
For many families there are issues that precede a young person’s gang involvement. Personal circumstances typically involve poverty, unsuitable housing, separation, family conflict, domestic abuse, substance misuse, mental health and imprisonment.

Gang involvement increases the risk of violence and victimisation to the young person, their friends and their family, therefore, it essential when supporting young people to exit gangs we adopt a ‘whole family’ approach.

A ‘whole family’ approach involves working with the family to assess risk, ensuring all family members feel safe, mentoring young people who are involved in or at risk of gang and serious youth violence and offering holistic support to enable the family to achieve their potential and raise aspirations.

Without the right support, families can become trapped in a cycle of homelessness, crime, unemployment and poverty that is passed on from generation to generation.

St Giles Trust solution to this stark reality is our Children & Families Service. The C&F team offer an intensive and holistic approach that seeks to understand the complex and inter-related family issues behind poverty in order to resolve them. Children & Families Caseworkers break the cycle, unlocking chaotic families’ potential, and empowering them to raise themselves out of poverty.

Key Deliverables:

• To develop and maintain relationships with other agencies, ensuring a steady flow of referrals to the project; in particular schools, PRU’s, Youth Offending Services and Children’s Social Care. 
• To support families using a  1:1 tailored and holistic practical & emotional support to improve mental health & wellbeing, housing, finances, living environment and increase their readiness to engage in training and employment 
• To complete initial needs assessments with families and support them to develop individual action plans and regularly review to assess progress 
• To promote inter-agency collaboration in the assessment and planning process and to include involved agencies in the delivery of the services
• To carry out and review thorough risk management plans with families ensuring each family member has an age-appropriate safety plan
• Provide a client led support service that responds to individual’s needs. Key elements will include supporting with housing, finances, schooling, parenting, health and wellbeing, ETE and criminal justice
• To support families who are affected by domestic violence, this will include working with victims and perpetrators
• To deliver the service in a timely and targeted manner, working through identified issues on the action plan, promoting case closure as an achievable outcome
• To close cases effectively and positively, identifying a survival plan for the client that can be used for ongoing support and agencies that can be used if serious problems develop in the future
• To support the Team Leader  with other tasks as and when required
• To carry out any other similar duties as required, including providing support to other St Giles Trust projects on occasion. 

What we are looking for from you – Person Specification 

When completing your application form please address the points marked with (A) set out below. 

Experience:

• Experience of working with socially excluded children, young people and adults. (A) 
• Experience of providing advice and guidance and/or mentoring to Families.  (A) 
• Experience in negotiating and networking with partner agencies to establish links to further the aims of a project. 
• Experience of successfully engaging with challenging families and young people, for example people those who have complex needs, people who are reluctant to discuss their needs, and people who are angry and confused. 

Qualifications:

• Mentoring Level 3 qualification (or be willing to work towards this). (A) 
• Any other level 3 and up qualifications.

Knowledge: 

• Knowledge of anti-discriminatory working practices, and the implications of both within the working environment. 
• Practical application of diversity awareness and unconscious bias in employment.(A) 
• Knowledge of and commitment to safeguarding practices and policies, and an ability to promote safeguarding among vulnerable clients and colleagues. (A) 

Skills & Abilities:

• Ability to be a flexible and co-operative member of a team. 
• Ability to demonstrate knowledge and awareness of the issues faced by our client group, in particular barriers faced by people with lived in experience. (A) 
• Ability to work alongside other professionals, professionally representing St Giles Trust
• The ability to use and develop monitoring systems to record all aspects of the project, and the ability to write case studies on sessions with young people.
• Ability to calculate risk and implement safety procedures when engaging with clients. 
• An ability to recognise the signs of child sexual and criminal exploitation (CSE and CCE) and, following safeguarding policies and measures, take appropriate action. 
• Strong IT skills including proven experience of using Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Outlook in a similar work environment.  Ability to work with case database (e.g. Inform) on a day-to-day basis. 

Attitude:

• Commitment to consultative & collaborative ways of working. 
• Commitment to and understanding of safeguarding and professional boundaries. 
• Respect for the values and ethos of St Giles Trust. 
• Personal and professional integrity. (A) 
• Positive attitude towards staff, clients and our Peers/volunteers.
• Emotionally Resilient. (A) 

What we will do to support you in this role 

We will provide the following resources to assist in the successful achievement of the responsibilities outlined above: 

• On-going and targeted learning and development that will support and enable you to deliver the role to a high standard;
• A  full induction;
• Continuous support and supervision including reflective practice to develop your learning and skills as a practitioner. 

As an organisation that works with children and adults at risk we are committed to safeguarding, protecting and promoting the safety of our clients and successful applicants will be subject to an enhanced DBS.

Please note this role requires Enhanced Child and Adult Workforce with Child Barred list

In return, you can expect a competitive salary, generous leave allowance, staff pension, flexible working, a mentoring programme, an advice and counselling service, season ticket loan and much more.

We are an equity and inclusion confident employer. We welcome all applications and we particularly encourage applications from people of the global majority (black, brown, multi- heritage ) and those who identify as disabled, neuroexpansive, neurodiverse, with any protected characteristics and/or social barriers or challenges. We value the empowering and informative impact that all lived experiences and diversity of thought can offer the organisation.

St Giles will guarantee to interview all disabled applicants who meet the minimum criteria set out in the Job Description for the vacancy.

Closing date: 11pm, Tuesday 25th June 2024