Service Manager (The Community)

About The Connection at St Martin’s

We believe that no one should have to sleep rough on London’s streets, and that everyone should get the support they need to find a place to call home. We get to know every person we work with, understanding what they need to recover, helping them build on their strengths, and supporting them to find their own way home. Help us make London a city where no one sleeps rough on our streets.

London’s diversity is its biggest asset and we strive to ensure our workforce reflects London’s diversity at all levels. We welcome applications from everyone regardless of age, gender, gender identity, gender expression, ethnicity, sexual orientation, faith or disability.

We particularly encourage applications from candidates with lived experience of homelessness who we believe are an essential asset in our sector.

We are committed to being an inclusive employer and welcome the opportunity to consider flexible working arrangements.

About the Role

The Connection is an innovative Day Centre that offers a place of safety and support for people that are long term rough sleeping and are experiencing severe and multiple disadvantages. The people accessing our services often have other interconnecting needs, alongside their homelessness, that they struggle to get met in mainstream provision, such as physical health, mental health, substance dependency, cyclic criminal justice involvement, domestic abuse and social exclusion.

You will lead the Community Team, an established service within The Connection which is working towards supporting the organisations innovative development of its service offer in becoming a centre for health inclusion and harm reduction. A place built on pre-treatment, gender and trauma informed principles, where those most in need can be supported into the right services for them. This could be by referral and signposting, or through doing longer term work with us and our in-reach/sector partners.

The Community delivers the initial triage function to determine if people are eligible for our services longer term. For those that aren’t, support will be offered to get them to the ‘right place’, and for those that are eligible or need a slower approach, the team will focus on building relationships, meeting people’s immediate needs and delivering a range of interventions. This is by facilitating and providing access to a variety of essential services, health and well-being orientated in-reach clinics, groups and activities, as well as further support around accommodation, welfare and wider unmet needs. The Community also feed directly into The Connection’s other teams, such as outreach, gender informed services, immigration and skills and opportunities.

The is an exciting opportunity to build a new approach to working with people that are experiencing multiple disadvantage. You will develop a team that builds trust through relationships and provides bespoke, person-led, trauma-informed support. You will bring strong knowledge of services, housing options, health inclusion, harm minimisation and social care entitlements. You and your team will use this knowledge and experience to deliver a trauma informed triage system, and a wider service offer of meeting people’s needs, through working with partners to support stabilisation, access to services and delivering direct intervention.

You are a dynamic, inspirational and capable leader whose compassionate and proactive approach builds a responsive, high-performing team, with a clear sense of purpose. You will draw on staff strengths, encourage collaboration, creativity and professional curiosity, and support resilience and wellbeing to meet individuals’ needs and aspirations. You will be managing and leading a team of staff and volunteers, alongside other developing projects, and you will be confident and able to navigate change. Through compassionate and adaptive management style, you will support the organisations vision to deliver services that genuinely meet people's needs and demonstrate best practice. 

You will take a strengths-based, solution-focused approach, developing internal and external partnerships and embedding coproduction to improve services. Organised, analytical and reflective, you will balance competing priorities and align your practice with the Connection’s traits: Curious, Safe, Together and Motivated.

Salary: £45,639 - £52,126 (Scale 29-35)  
Closing Date: Wednesday 2nd December
Interview Date: Thursday 10th December

Our Benefits

·        30 days holiday plus bank holidays

·        Generous training budget, plus an annual personal training budget

·        Enhanced Sick Pay Policy

·        Enhanced family friendly policies

·        Day off for moving house

·        Hybrid working (depending on role requirements)

·        Pension – 5% Employer, 3% Employee

·        Cycle to Work Scheme

·        Season Ticket Loan

·        Employee Assistance Programme

·        Reward Gateway (access to discount vouchers and cashback at the UK’s favourite retailers)

We are a London Living Wage employer