We’re looking for a Support Worker to join our friendly team. You will be based in our Maldon office, playing a pivotal role in supporting unpaid family carers who look after someone due to their age, disability, long-term physical or mental health condition or an addiction. You will act as the initial point of contact for carers managing referrals and ensuring carers receive a timely response to enquiries. You will conduct initial conversations with carers to understand their needs and circumstance. And you will provide carers with appropriate information, advice and guidance, from accessing benefits, peer support or respite breaks.
About Us
Action for Family Carers is a well-established Essex-based charity dedicated to supporting unpaid carers and young carers. We’ve been making a positive impact for over 30 years.
About You
You are a great listener! You can build trusted relationships with a range of people. You have experience working in a similar role with knowledge of assessing need, building support plans and providing relevant information, advice and guidance. You have an awareness of the impact of caring responsibilities and importantly, you are empathetic and understanding, with ability to work with carers in a non-judgemental way.
What We Offer
- Salary: Band 5, £23,017 per annum
- Contract: 12 months (extension subject to funding)
- Hours: 35 hours per week
- Location: Office based, Maldon, Essex
Benefits
- Full induction and relevant training
- Contributory work-based pension scheme
- Access to a 24-hour Employee Assistance Programme
- Flexible working arrangements
Closing date 5pm on Tuesday 9th July 2024.
If you are interested in this role please apply ASAP. We reserve the right to bring forward the deadline.
Action for Family Carers is an equal opportunities employer and positively encourages applications from all sections of the community. If you have difficulty reading this please call us or come into one of our offices.
Job Description
ROLE PURPOSE:
As a Support Worker, you will play a pivotal role in assisting unpaid family carers who look after someone due to their age, disability, long-term physical or mental health condition, or addiction. Your responsibilities will include providing a timely initial response to enquiries and referrals to the Charity. You will maintain regular telephone and email contact with our service users, responding to queries and registering individuals onto our database. You will offer telephone support to carers, providing information to help them manage the practical aspects of their caring roles and navigate support systems, as well as offering emotional support to help them maintain their own wellbeing. For those requiring longer-term support, you will be responsible for referring individual carers to the appropriate local support teams. Additionally, you will provide effective administrative support to our Carer Support team to ensure efficient service delivery.
MAIN RESPONSIBILITIES:
Referral and enquiry management
- Act as an initial point of contact for incoming calls, messages, and service referrals.
- Process referrals, send acknowledgements, and contact referrers and families when more information is required.
- Act as a central point of contact for internal and external queries relating to referrals.
- Allocate cases to the relevant teams and projects, providing a prompt and effective initial response and ensuring clear and appropriate internal handover and/or external referral/signposting.
Providing information, advice & guidance
- Complete initial conversation with carers, where required, to understand their needs and circumstances.
- Provide information, advice and practical support, to carers over the phone and via email.
- Help carers understand and navigate systems impacting their daily lives (e.g., housing,
- health, social care, and benefits).
- Ensure carers have access to and are aware of their rights including, but not
- exclusively, statutory assessment.
- Liaise with relevant agencies providing informal advocacy where needed to secure appropriate support.
- Refer and signpost to other services and support both internally and externally.
Recording & Monitoring
- Accurately maintain the CRM system, recording actions within agreed timeframes and ensuring new carer details are accurately added to the system.
- Utilise assessment tools, as appropriate, to support carers in developing support plans
- tailored to their specific needs.
- Use evaluation and outcome-based tools to monitor progress toward individual goals
- and measure effectiveness of the service.
- Contact service users to conduct reviews of progress against goals and gather feedback on the quality of our services.
- Assist with completion of monitoring reports, case studies, evaluation reports.
Administration
- Undertake administrative tasks, including printing, scanning, copying, shredding, and arranging meetings as needed.
Data administration
- Provide ongoing support for users of the CRM system, troubleshoot data-related issues and provide timely resolutions.
- Monitor CRM data quality and perform regular audits to identify and resolve discrepancies.
- Ensure data held on the CRM is accurate and up to date including by undertaking regular data cleansing
Service development
- Assist in promoting the programme and other services within the local community and with key stakeholders
- Identify and collate common and recurring issues facing local Carers and families, report on areas of unmet need and best practice.
- Support Carer engagement activity to inform future planning.
Other
- Adopt a flexible working approach to accommodate the availability of carers and meet business requirements. This may involve working outside of regular core hours.
- Work as a team to facilitate flexible work arrangements, to cover hours ranging from 8 am to 6 pm on weekdays and occasional Saturdays from 9 am to 12 pm e.g. starting earlier or working later by agreement.
- Ensure full compliance with organisational Policies and Procedures including but not limited to, Financial Procedures, Safeguarding Policy and Procedures, Equal opportunities, Health & Safety and Data Protection.
- Take responsibility for self-development, identifying learning opportunities, and attending relevant training.
- Carry out the above and any other duties commensurate with the post, agreed with the CEO and Board of Trustees, in a manner which actively supports and promotes organisational aims.
Person Specification
Experience
Essential
- Working with Carers, vulnerable or disadvantaged individuals, older people, people with disabilities and/or working within health, social care, community services or voluntary services.
- Providing information, advice, advocacy, coaching/goal setting or other one-to-one or group support.
- Proven experience in providing customer service via phone, email, and face-to-face interactions.
- Familiarity with CRM systems and experience in managing and maintaining databases.
Desirable
- Experience in an administrative role, preferably within a social care, healthcare or voluntary setting.
Skills & understanding
Essential
- Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal.
- Highly competent in use of IT (Microsoft Applications Word, Excel, Outlook, Teams)
- Excellent organisational and time management skills with a proven ability to prioritise and manage a complex workload.
- Ability to handle sensitive and confidential information with discretion.
- Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to work under pressure.
- Knowledge of issues affecting carers and available support services
Desirable
- Understanding of needs, rights and legislation affecting carers and knowledge of welfare benefits.
Personal Qualities & Attributes
- A positive, non-judgemental attitude and the ability to motivate and empower others.
- Excellent listening skills, empathetic and understanding with ability to build trusted
- relationships with a range of people.
- Self-motivated with ability to work proactively with minimal supervision, meet deadlines and show attention to detail.
- High level of professional credibility, integrity and emotional resilience.
Other
- Own vehicle available for use at work, with appropriate insurance cover
- Ability to work flexibly, so that support can be adapted to the availability of carers and needs of business.
- Commitment to the ethos of equality and diversity
- The job holder will need to provide evidence of their ability to work in the UK.
