Homeless Support Worker

Our mission at Response is to enable people of all ages to live a more fulfilled life by providing excellent mental health services, housing, and supported living.

Do you have the desire to empower and promote independence and an interest in mental health? 

Homeless Support Worker - £26,500 - £29,500 per annum (Salaries vary depending on experiences)

Hours – 37 hours per week, Monday to Friday

Department – Adult Service Delivery

Location – Oxfordshire – Hybrid working with regular visits to client accommodation

What You’ll Be Doing:

Response are recruiting for a Homeless Support Worker within Adult Services, Settled Oxfordshire, to help people who have had experiences of street homelessness, and repeated placements within supported and crisis housing services to sustain their own tenancy, live independently, and move-on into mainstream accommodation. Working closely in partnership with a range of other providers, both voluntary and statutory, you will have the support and guidance of the Service Manager to provide a housing management, support and move-on service to a small group of vulnerable people who have recently experienced homelessness. The accommodation will be located within Oxford City and throughout the County. If you're a motivated individual looking for an exciting opportunity to contribute to a compassionate organisation, we want to hear from you!

Overall job responsibility:

Some of the core duties include:

To provide an intensive support and housing management service to a caseload of 9 or 10 clients through proactive floating support.
To ensure that each client has a comprehensive support plan with achievable goals and outcomes and a robust risk assessment and that both documents will be updated regularly with input of client and other professionals delivering support interventions. 
To provide person centred support to the clients and recognise that they are experts by experience. 
To work with each successful referral to identify interventions that will allow the client to move into the accommodation, sustain their home, and identify and plan for the factors/ challenges that might destabilise their tenancy.
Supporting clients with benefit applications, affordability assessments and repayment plans.
To conduct regular visit to the accommodation and support the clients with practical skills such as budgeting, cleaning, etc
To ensure that the clients will engage with agencies providing support with addressing needs such as substance misuse, offending, accessing education, employment and training. 
To ensure that clients are encouraged to engage in meaningful activities. 
To promote peer support where relevant and appropriate. 
To ensure that the properties are safe and compliant with Health and Safety regulations 
To ensure that internal and external stakeholders and partnership agencies are informed about progress of each client. 
Provide a housing management service for the clients, including dealing with rent arrears, managing anti-social behaviour, dealing with other breaches of the tenancy agreement, serving notices and reporting and ordering any repairs.
Be aware of early signs of abuse, potential safeguarding and ensure that reporting procedures are followed when Safeguarding is triggered. 
To provide regular reports on the progress of each case.
The role will be hybrid and will consist of working in the office, from home and from client's properties as well as community resources such as cafes, libraries and day services.
To support the client with understanding their move on options and create a realistic move on plan for each client including increasing living skills, preparing for and finding work, move on, budgeting, substance misuse and much more.

The Successful Applicant:

Our main priority for all our roles at Response is to find people that can live our values every day – Caring, Safe, Creative and Aspirational. We provide excellent training on everything else, but we do ask that you have: 

GCSE’s in English and Maths (or equivalent) A commitment to undertake continual personal development
Solid understanding of homelessness and issues connected to it. 
Ability to effectively engage with clients and provide non judgmental support and advice.
Good Communication Skills, written, verbal & listening.
Safeguarding. 
Understanding on complex trauma and personality disorder. 
Working with clients with history of homelessness, substance use, offending, challenging behaviour. 
Ability to act calmly in a professional manner whilst dealing with unpredictable and challenging behaviour.
Ability to engage with and build appropriate working relationships.

What We Offer:

33 days annual leave (inclusive of bank holidays) 
Blue Light card and other discounted shopping
Employee Assistance Plan - with access to free counselling 
Cycle to Work Scheme (after probation)
Enhanced family friendly leave
Flexible and agile working opportunities (role dependent) 
Professional qualification sponsorship and study leave 
£500 refer a friend bonus scheme 
Optional health cash care plan with money off prescriptions and treatments
Wellbeing hub and mental wellbeing support app – approved by NHS
Free flu jabs
Free DBS application

If this Homeless Support Worker position sounds like the role for you then please apply today! We would love to hear from you! This vacancy may be closed early. To learn more about Response and what we do, please visit our website.

Our employees and clients come from all over the world, we proudly promote a friendly and inclusive culture and are registered as a Disability Confident Employer. We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of our clients. All our roles require an enhanced DBS check, two references from most recent employers and you must have the right to work in the UK