Peer Advocate Worker Jobs in Oxford, Oxfordshire
HMP Bullingdon, Oxfordshire
Ref SEF-241
Are you a dynamic and collaborative individual who wants to support people entering prison to gain the skills and tools to develop their emotional resilience? Looking for an exciting and highly rewarding new career opportunity?
If so, join St Giles as our Settling in Facilitator, where you will provide vital classroom sessions on emotional resilience to all new prison receptions and deliver tailored one-to-one support to people in prison who are not able to access the classroom sessions.
About St Giles
St Giles is an award-winning social justice charity using expertise and real-life past experiences to empower people who are not getting the help they need. People held back by poverty, exploited, abused, dealing with addiction or mental health problems, caught up in crime or a combination of these issues and others. We show people there is a way to build a better future for themselves and those they care about and help them create this through support, advice, and training. Our peer-led services form the backbone of our work, putting people with lived experience at the centre of delivery, design, and evaluation of support and services across the UK.
About this key role
As a Settling in Facilitator, you will be embedded within a prison-based setting and provide a quality service to people first entering prison. We will count on you to prepare, plan, and deliver the emotional resilience interactive sessions to individuals in prison, ensuring all sessions are appropriate and contextualised to reflect the local needs of the prison and its changing population and utilising expertise around lived experience and local knowledge to empower people in prison.
You will also be expected to deliver additional tailored sessions to individuals who are unable to attend the group sessions or require additional support and to use a trauma-informed approach to build trust and create a safe space for people in prison to explore challenging and potentially traumatic issues and topics.
What we are looking for
• Personal experience of the social care system; criminal justice system; or lived experience of the issues facing this client group.
• The ability to build positive relationships with people in prison and be comfortable and confident working in the prison environment.
• A professionally competent approach and confidence facilitating group sessions, as well as being able to tailor the support given to meet the needs of people in prison.
• An invested interest in supporting people in prison to develop healthy coping strategies.
• Excellent interpersonal, relationship-building and communication skills, verbal and written.
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:
• A full induction
• On-going and targeted learning and development will support and enable you to deliver the role to a high standard.
• Continuous support and supervision including reflective practice to develop your learning and skills as a practitioner.
Enhanced DBS Check & Prison Vetting is required for this Role.
In return, you can expect a competitive salary, generous leave allowance, staff pension, flexible working, a mentoring programme, an advice and counselling service, clinical therapist sessions, life insurance (4 x annual salary), duvet days, season ticket loan, employee perks programme, eye care voucher 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.
To apply please visit our website via the apply button.
Closing date: 14 April 2024 11:45pm
The vacancy
We have a great opportunity for an Advice & Wellbeing Specialist to join the team on a permanent basis. In this Outreach role you’ll be working predominantly in our Reading & Oxford communities, with one day a week working from our Houghton Hall office in Houghton Regis
As an Advice and Wellbeing Specialist, you will report to the Advice and Wellbeing Team Leader. You’ll deliver proactive and trauma informed support to meet the holistic needs of residents. Your support will be tailored to your resident’s needs, and you will work closely with them to understand their wellbeing concerns and agree an action plan to enable them to sustain their tenancies and feel connected to their community. You will empower residents to manage their wellbeing needs by helping them to develop and maintain skills and resilience to lead independent and fulfilled lives.
You will work collaboratively with wider teams, statutory services external advice and support services to ensure residents have the appropriate support. You will build partnerships with external stakeholders in your area to ensure there is a strong network for support for our residents. You will also be delivering advice and wellbeing support in community wellbeing hubs and providing peer support to colleagues.
What you'll need:
- A Full UK driving licence with access to own car.
- Demonstrable experience dealing with vulnerable people.
- Demonstrable experience dealing with complex cases.
- Experience providing frontline support and giving advice.
- Be passionate about customer service, being resilient with a positive and can-do-attitude.
- Have excellent written and verbal communication skills.
- Be exceptionally organised with the ability to self-manage a diverse and varied caseload, prioritising work effectively and produce high quality work.
If this sounds like you, this role might be perfect for you!
A bit about the role:
You will work closely and collaboratively with residents in their homes and neighbourhoods to understand their immediate needs, as well as their wider goals and aspirations to achieve sustainable outcomes. You will do this through a mix of direct support and advocacy, as well as exceptional partnership working with other Peabody teams, our contractors, statutory and voluntary services, and by supporting local wellbeing projects.
Some of the key results for the role include:
- As the Advice and Wellbeing Specialist, you will be providing holistic wellbeing support that supports residents to sustain their tenancies successfully.
- Actively build strong partnerships with other Peabody teams, housing associations, local authorities, statutory and voluntary services to promote effective multi-agency working and information sharing.
- Work with the Allocations, Financial Inclusion and Neighbourhoods teams to target early tenancy support to new residents who need this and ensure others know how to access your support if facing any difficulties in the future.
- Support the delivery and promotion of wellbeing hubs and cafes, as well as other projects in your region.
An enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check is required for this role and requires a full, clean driving licence. This role will be covering the Oxford and Reading area.
A minimum of 2 to 3 days working in the office/covering your patch is required; the other days can be worked from home, or a local office.
Weekly hours Monday - Friday, 09.00 - 17.00 with occasional outside of hours work.
Contract type Permanent
A bit about us:
160 years after it was established, Peabody is one of the oldest not-for-profit housing associations in the UK.
The Peabody Group is responsible for more than 107,000 homes, with around 220,000 residents across London and the Home Counties. We also have around 20,000 care and support customers.
Our purpose is to help people flourish, and we are getting closer to residents by taking a local approach.
We are committed to delivering a responsive and easily accessible repairs service and investing in our existing homes so they are safe and well maintained. Our retrofit projects will make thousands of our homes more energy efficient.
We work with councils and communities to promote economic inclusion, tackle inequality and poverty, and prioritise wellbeing.
Here's just a few of the benefits for working at Peabody:
- Flexible and hybrid working (depending on the role)
- Up to 30 days’ annual holiday plus bank holidays
- Competitive salaries that are benchmarked regularly against current market rates
- Two additional paid volunteering days each year
- Flexible benefits scheme, including family friendly benefits and access to a discount portal
- 4 x salary life assurance
- Up to 10% pension contribution
Are you ready to apply?
PLEASE NOTE: As an employer, Peabody does not provide sponsorship as a licenced UK employer.
To be considered for the position of Advice & Wellbeing Specialist (Houghton Regis/Oxford/Reading), please visit our website and submit both your CV and a bit about why we should consider you for the role.
Peabody reserves the right to close this advert before the advertised closing date, depending on the number of applications received.
Closing Date: 01 April 2024
Interviews will be taking place on Thursday 18 April