Dementia Support Worker

Contract Type: Permanent
Location: Community based - Wakefield and Five Towns
Salary: £20,363 - £21,603 actual per annum (depending on skills and experience)
Working Hours: 35 per week

Closing Date: 02 December 2021
Interview Date: To be confirmed (interviews will be conducted through Zoom or Teams)

Area role covers: Wakefield and Five Towns

Alzheimer's Society is the UK's leading dementia charity. We provide information and support, improve care, fund research, and create lasting change for people affected by dementia.

About the role

The Alzheimer’s Society Dementia Support service involves dedicated members of staff giving one to one support, information and guidance to people with dementia or their carers and wider family or friends, to help people understand dementia, cope with day to day living with dementia and prepare for the future.

We are looking for an exceptional individual to join our vibrant, passionate, and friendly support service in Wakefield and Five Towns.

As a Dementia Support Worker you will have the rewarding opportunity to provide support and guidance to people with dementia and their carers; helping to maintain their independence, improving their sense of well-being, and putting them in more control of their lives. The service is unique to each service user as it is based upon their personal circumstances and support needs.

You will offer support and guidance to your clients in a variety of ways, whether in the client's own home, at service offices or at other locations, face to face, by phone, letter or email. You will also assist service users to access other services, providing signposting and referrals, as well as facilitating peer support groups and other group activities.

You will also work with BAME communities to encourage communities to become Dementia Friendly and develop a strong voice for people affected by dementia in the communities.

About you

We are looking for an individual who possess NVQ level 3 (or equivalent) with an understanding of dementia and the needs of those living with dementia and their carers. Your ability to assess client needs along with the understanding of the need for client confidentially is essential to providing a valuable and worthwhile service. To be successful in this role you will have excellent non-judgmental communication skills as well as strong organisational and time management skills in order to manage your caseload of clients effectively.

Our employees work hard every day to make a true difference in people's lives. We are proud to support them with a range of benefits, recognition and many options for working agilely, all contributing to a strong work life balance. We also have various learning programmes to support you in your development and help you grow to realise your potential and shape a career with Alzheimer's Society.

You can also visit our Working for Us pages, which give you more information about what it’s like to be an employee at the Society.

You may have experience of the following: Support Worker, Dementia Adviser, Care Assistant, Dementia Advisor, Caseworker, Special Needs Assistant, Social Worker, Social Care, Community Care, Helpline Coordinator, Volunteering Officer, Support Worker, Mental Health, Dementia, NFP, Not for Profit, Charity, etc.

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We’re looking for a Service Designer to join our team to:

1. Collaborate with team members to lead the human-centred and community-centred pieces of work with organisations across the asylum and refugee sector.
2. Develop the existing digital products which run across the Good Practice & Partnerships team with support from external developers and support the development of services alongside team members
3. Innovate with the team to understand the changing needs of organisations and their communities to design ways of increasing collective impact.

Our Good Practice and Partnership (GPP) team connects, collaborates and works with over 250 organisations to build capacity and co-design solutions to the challenges they face. The team has built strong, trusting relationships with organisations and work with them to build offers which respond to asylum seekers and refugees’ needs.

Since 2017 the GPP team has been working closely with CAST and SIDE Labs to learn and build design and digital skills and experience within the team to both develop services across the team and build skills across the sector. In 2018 we transformed a traditional service delivery model and created Asylum Guides, a programme which now supports several organisations to provide legal information to asylum seekers across England and Wales.

The Digital Design for Good Practice project is funded by the National Lottery Community Fund under its Digital Fund Programme. The project takes a design-led approach to developing, testing and sharing new services and products to improve service delivery in the asylum and refugee sector, with a focus on immigration legal advice, early action service design and volunteer-led legal literacy programmes. This work aims to benefit 80,000 refugees and people seeking asylum in the UK.

At the beginning of the pandemic we launched our Digital Design for Good Practice project as the Coronavirus Response Project to bring organisations together to adapt to the crisis. We partnered with SIDE Labs throughout the pandemic who provided digital expertise and upskilled the team through collaborative working and peer learning. We published the Coronavirus Asylum Handbook bringing together 40 organisational responses to the pandemic at the end of March 2020 and this was followed by several design sprints centred around different key issues organisations were having to come to terms with. We built a microsite to host learning, guidance and sector stories as well providing a digital space for the other projects across GPP. We also started a monthly newsletter, an online meetup group and a community Slack workspace. In January 2021 we ran the Explore Programme which supported 12 organisations to adapt their services to respond to the challenges posed by Covd-19 and in March 2021 two Experts by Experience Groups Pilots which supported organisations to set up user groups and learn from each other. Insights and learning from the Digital Fund Programme so far highlights our role in supporting other organisations to develop digital skills during the pandemic.

We’re currently reviewing needs and learning and the Service Designer will join the team to lead on the delivery of internal and external design projects as well as developing existing products and supporting design skills development across the team.

To succeed in this role you will have:

• Knowledge and experience of human-centred and community-centered methodologies
• Significant experience working in service design, applying user research, user-journey mapping, prototyping and co-design
• Excellent project management skills and ability to plan and manage own workload
• Insight into the needs, hopes and experiences of asylum seekers and refugees in the UK, and the organisations providing services to them, especially in relation to justice, homelessness and poverty

We want to make sure that we reach to as many potential candidates as possible and that we make the process very accessible so we will be running two ‘info’ sessions where interested people can come and find out more about the role, the work of the Good Practice and Partnerships team and the application process.

Please find further information on these sessions, and advice and information on how to apply by following the link to our Jobs page on the Refugee Action website.

Those with lived experience as a refugee are encouraged to apply.

Closing date: 29th November

Interviews: 14th December (Remote interviews)

Working in partnership with GamCare (the leading national provider of information, advice and support for the treatment for anyone affected by problem gambling) and the NHS Northern Gambling Clinic, NECA are delighted to be involved in the delivery of integrated support services to anyone experiencing gambling harms across Leeds and the surrounding area.

We are seeking to recruit a dynamic and proactive individual to work within the integrated Hub service in Leeds. Providing Tier 3 interventions to individual, families or couples following a CBT based model, undertaking comprehensive assessment, structured interventions, and group programmes to individuals experiencing difficulties with gambling.

The successful candidate will have considerable knowledge and experience of the issues affecting this client group and will hold a Professional Diploma (level 4) in a relevant field e.g. Health and Social Care, Social Work, Counselling (or equivalent).

An Enhanced DBS check will be required.

NECA aims to be an equality and diversity employer. We welcome applications from relevant qualified people from all sections of the community regardless of age, disability, gender assignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation.

We are seeking an experienced content writer who is passionate about producing high-quality, evidence-based information for people affected by a long-term medical condition.

Epilepsy Action is the leading epilepsy charity in the UK and exists to improve the lives of everyone affected by epilepsy. Last year, over 1,00,000 people accessed the advice and information available on our website and in our portfolio of printed resources.

You will be researching and writing information about epilepsy and related issues for a wide audience. You will be working collaboratively with other teams to produce clear, accessible content for our website and audio-visual and print resources. You will engage with people affected by epilepsy to ensure user involvement and liaise with subject matter experts who peer review our content.

You will need excellent written communication skills and an ability to communicate complex information in plain English. You will be skilled at cross-organisational working and be able work to tight deadlines to ensure projects are completed on time and to a high standard. If you have these skills, we’d like to hear from you.

In return, we will offer you great flexible working conditions, a range of employee benefits, including a contributory pension plan, which is available to you from the day you start, and a commitment to developing your skills and providing necessary training.

For a full description of our requirements and information on how to apply, visit our website via the Apply button.

Closing date: Friday 3 December 2021
Interview date: Tuesday 14 December 2021

Epilepsy Action is a Disability Confident employer. We encourage applications from disabled people.

We will interview all disabled applicants who meet the essential criteria in the person specification. Please show how you meet the essential criteria in the supporting information section.