Befriender Volunteer () Jobs in Merton
We’re looking for two self-starting team members who will help coordinate our JUMP befriending project for unaccompanied asylum seekers and refugees.
You’ll be responsible for half of the befriending pairs (currently 28, increasing to 50 in the coming months) and undertake tasks such as working with our partner organisations, managing referrals for young people, recruiting volunteer befrienders, and setting-up and sustaining pairs. This includes leading an initial training day.
You’ll also provide JUMP young people with casework support, help organise our group events and facilitate support from our Hardship Fund.
Main functions
Supporting young people and the JUMP Community
- Managing a caseload of young people; including offering casework support; arranging and attending appointments with the young person where necessary and signposting to available support.
- Helping plan and organise quarterly group events.
- Conducting initial assessments with young people to understand their needs, and once paired with a volunteer, hosting befriending initial meetings.
Supervising and supporting volunteers
- Recruiting, interviewing and onboarding new befrienders, including organising and delivering training.
- Supporting befriending volunteers through regular supervisions, meetings, emails and phone calls, and responding promptly to any safeguarding concerns raised.
- Ensuring that volunteers uphold JUMP’s policies and boundaries for befriending.
Publicising JUMP, and engaging with key stakeholders
- Publicising the project to existing and potential referral agencies, and establishing and maintaining excellent working relationships with them.
- Representing HIAS+JCORE and JUMP in the refugee sector as required, for example at the Refugee and Migrant Children’s Consortium (RMCC) meetings.
Project monitoring, evaluation and record keeping
- Working with experts and the JUMP Project Manager on supporting the project and its evaluation, and keeping accurate records in JUMP’s database.
Other Duties
- Ensuring that JUMP informs our campaigns, communications and education work. As the project develops, there will be opportunities for the post-holder to contribute to and support these areas of our work.
We're looking for candidates who have
- Ability to support, develop rapport and trust with, and motivate both young people and volunteers from a range of backgrounds and ages in challenging circumstances, including the ability to facilitate and engage in cross cultural communication.
- Knowledge of issues facing separated asylum seeking and refugee children and young people, and the rights and entitlements of ‘Looked After’ children and young people.
- Understanding of the current context surrounding immigration, asylum and welfare issues facing children and young people in the UK today.
- Understanding of Child Protection and Vulnerable Adult Safeguarding, and ability to communicate this to volunteers.
- Understanding of youth work principles and methods, including the benefits and challenges of befriending and other participatory methods.
- Ability to network in the refugee sector and develop strong working relationships.
- Ability to work independently and to self-motivate.
- Commitment to HIAS+JCORE values, social justice and antiracism.
- The ability to communicate in languages other than English, in particular Arabic, Spanish and French (desirable)
Experience required
Essential
- A track record of working directly with asylum seeking and refugee children and young people.
- Experience of social work, youth work, or other relevant methods of supporting people in challenging circumstances.
- Experience of training, coordinating and supporting volunteers.
- Experience of juggling commitments and responding to relevant stressful situations.
Desirable
- Educated to at least undergraduate degree level, or equivalent background or experience.
- Working knowledge of Local Authorities’ responsibilities for Looked After Children and Care Leavers.
- Experience of project management including administration, monitoring, evaluation and report writing.
About HIAS+JCORE
HIAS+JCORE is the UK Jewish voice on refugees and racial justice. Our work is driven by the belief that the Jewish community should play an active part in building a society in which refugees are able to live in dignity where the UK is a welcoming place free from racism.
Role details
Salary: £30,000 (pro-rata'd to £18,000)
Hours: 21 hours per week. Flexible working; some evening and weekend work will be required.
Location: Hybrid working between home and our North London office space.
Applicants must be UK based either in London/the South-East or be willing to relocate. We are only able to consider applicants who have the right to work in the UK. HIAS+JCORE is unable to sponsor working visas to the UK.
We warmly encourage and welcome applicants from all backgrounds, and people with any, or no, particular religious faith or beliefs. We particularly encourage applicants from people with lived experience of the asylum system.
Interviews will be held in person in north London in mid-May.
The client requests no contact from agencies or media sales.
Actively Interviewing
This organisation is scheduling interviews as the applications come in. Don’t miss your opportunity, apply now!
Our award winning fundraising division is currently looking for an Engagement and Stewardship Executive to join our Partnership and Philanthropy team in this newly created role for the charity.
With ambitious plans to grow our fundraising income above £60m in the next 5 years we are expanding our fundraising team. The role sits within the newly created Operations Team ensuring Age UK's donor facing Partnerships and Philanthropy Team are provided with the highest quality donor research, engagement and stewardship materials required to create transformative partnerships with businesses, high net worth individuals, trusts and foundations.
In this newly created position we require a collaborative individual who can support our Senior Operations Manager deliver our stewardship strategy focused on inspiring, thanking and retaining our major donors, corporate partners and grant funders by creating engaging communications and activities.
This role offers hybrid working between home and London (EC3N 2LB). Our fundraising division attend the London office once a week on Thursday's.
Age UK internal grade - 7L
Must haves:
* Excellent verbal and written communication skills, with experience of producing high quality written materials that are tailored to the needs of specific internal or external audiences.
* Ability to prioritise, manage conflicting deadlines, work well under pressure and manage multiple tasks to deadline.
* Good interpersonal skills with the ability to interact with stakeholders at all levels.
* Proven experience of good collaboration with internal and external stakeholders.
* Ability to problem solve and proactively troubleshoot.
* High level of planning and organisation skills, with an ability to manage competing deadlines from different sources.
* Working knowledge of MS Office products and databases.
* A passion to join Age UK in supporting older people across the UK.
Great to haves
* Experience working in fundraising, preferably with corporate partners, grant funders or major donors.
* Experience of managing relationships with volunteers and/or Trustees.
* Some experience of supporting delivery of events.
* Ability to produce visuals and infographics using digital tools such as Canva.
What we offer in return
- Competitive salary, 26 days annual leave + bank holidays + annual leave purchase scheme
- Excellent pension scheme, life assurance, health cashback plan and EAP
- Car Benefit Scheme, Cycle to Work Scheme and Season Ticket Loan
- Techscheme - buy any tech from Apple or Currys, up to £1000, and spread the cost over 12 months, interest free
- Blue Light Card Scheme
- You Did It Awards - recognition awards from £100-250.
Additional Information
* This role is not a donor-facing role but sits within the newly created Partnerships and Philanthropy Operations team that provides the back-of-house systems, processes, content and support to enable donor-facing colleagues to operate efficiently and effectively.
* We ask all members of Age UK's Partnerships and Philanthropy department to work from our London hub near Tower Hill at least once a week to enable collaboration, skills development and team dynamics (currently Thursdays). From time to time, we may also require the successful candidate to come into our London hub for face-to-face meetings at other times in the week: as per the terms of our hybrid contracts we aim to give seven days' notice when this happens.
* This role may on occasions require travel outside of London and working outside of normal office hours e.g. for funder events and cultivation activities.
All CVs will be anonymised by our recruitment system when you apply for a role at Age UK. Please note that our system is unable to anonymise cover letters, and we would therefore ask that to support the work we are doing on making our recruitment selection process fairer and more unbiased, that you remove any personal information from your cover letter/supporting statement, including your name before uploading this. All equalities monitoring information is also anonymised and not shared with the hiring panel. Your name and address will only be known to us once you are invited for an interview.
Age UK is an Equal Opportunities employer and positively encourages applications from suitably qualified and eligible candidates, regardless of age, sex, race, disability, sexual orientation, gender reassignment, religion or belief, marital/civil partnership status, or pregnancy and maternity. We guarantee an interview to disabled candidates who meet the minimum criteria under the Disability Confident Scheme. Please note that on occasion, due to high numbers of applications, Age UK reserves the right to limit the overall number of interviews offered, and therefore, it may not always be practicable or appropriate to interview all disabled people that meet the minimum criteria for the job.
Age UK is committed to safeguarding adults at risk, and children, from abuse and neglect. We expect everyone who works with us to share this commitment.
Early application is encouraged as we will review applications throughout the advertising period and reserve the right to close the advert at any time.
Age UK politely requests no contact from recruitment agencies or media sales. We do not accept speculative CVs from recruitment agencies nor accept the fees associated with them.