Complex Needs Worker for Women’s Refuge

Location: Brent

Salary: £12.03 per hour

Contract: Monday to Friday 9am-5:18pm

Section 7(2) b & e of the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 apply to this position – (Only Female applicants Please).

Main Purpose of role: To provide support, advice, and assistance to women with complex needs who have or may have experienced domestic abuse.

Key responsibilities:

• Develop positive relationships with women to enable them to work towards and achieve their goals.
• Contribute positively towards the five key themes with Every Child Matters: - Being healthy - Staying safe - Enjoy and achieve - Making a positive contribution - Achieve economic wellbeing
• To motivate and empower service users and their child(ren) in all aspects of daily living.
• To support Service users and their child(ren) using a support plan system. To formulate, implement and review support plans with the participation of service users and external agencies. Taking into account that support plans are age appropriate.
• To advocate on behalf of families, and where appropriate accompanying them to relevant agencies.
• To provide play sessions for both pre-school and school aged children with educational, recreational and interactive opportunities.
• To plan and provide play schemes and activities during holiday periods.
• To assist mothers with parenting skills and signpost them to external agencies if required.
• To support families with issues and concerns surrounding domestic abuse.
• Empower families to improve their quality of life by promoting and maintaining independent living.
• Ensuring that confidentiality is kept at all times.
• To establish close working relationships with statutory and voluntary organisations.
• To develop a robust SUI package including promoting events, networking, fundraising and carrying out service users’ consultation and obtaining feedback.
• To participate in monthly meetings to address any issues around the family.
• Involve children and young people in the development of the project and explore creative ways of facilitating their involvement.
• To report any safeguarding related incidents immediately to line manager and follow relevant policies

Key Skills:

• The capacity to maintain firm boundaries, using authority legitimately whilst working pro-socially and positively with people.
• The ability to learn quickly, gather information and make defensible decisions
• The ability to receive, process and accurately record detailed information, sharing it with others, as appropriate and within the framework of confidentiality
• The ability to work with people who may display challenging behaviour and to defuse potentially difficult situations
• Having a solution focused approach and the capacity to work constructively and collaboratively towards problem solving
• Being optimistic about the possibility of change and the service users’ capacity to change
• A calm, non-judgemental and anti-discriminatory approach
• The ability to work within a structured, busy and sometimes pressured environment
• Willingness to travel and work across all the premises within services as well as accompanying clients’ to appointments when required
• Knowledge and understanding of safeguarding issues and ability to address them appropriately.