Job Description

1 of 7

Post:Navigator Service Co-ordinator

Hours:Full Time- 35 Hours per Week (with some evening and weekend working)

Salary:£25,000p.a

Team: Revival Home Improvement Agency

Responsible to: Revival Home Improvement Agency Manager

Location: 308, London Road, Stoke-on-Trent, ST4 5AB

Revival is a Home Improvement Agency (HIA) that is part of the Staffordshire Housing Group. Our work varies widely, but the main purpose is to help homeowners, focusing on those who are elderly, vulnerable or disabled live in warm, safe and secure homes.

The Post

The Navigator Co-ordinator will be responsible for developing and maintaining a volunteer programme for the service, having responsibility for supervising a team of volunteers who will be assisting with the support of older, disabled and vulnerable people that are referred to the service.

Key Functions

The main purpose of the service is prevention:

  • Primary prevention - aimed at enabling people to seek help without creating a reliance on public services.
  • Secondary prevention - aimed at helping people who have had a crisis and are using public services to reduce their reliance on those services and maximising their independence.

The Navigator service provides an informal advocate and support service working with vulnerable service users to enable them to have access to, and get involved in with, community activities, health and other services. It will help services users, especially older and the most vulnerable, who traditionally do not get involved in activities or access services early, to get involved, thus promoting prevention.

Referrals will come mainly through Revival’s Advice Hub. This could be where there is a health and wellbeing element to the work being carried out by the home improvement agency, or if it is identified that the customer is at risk of a fall or other accident and could benefit from being linked to health, social care or community based activities. Other referrals will be from social care and health professionals, carers or self-referrals.

General Tasks

  • To work alongsidethe Advice Hub to raise awareness of allour services, including the Navigator service with social and health care professionals, through outreach sessions, such as at GP surgeries.
  • Receive and act on referrals from the Advice Hub.
  • To work with the Advice Hub to build and maintain a series of relationships with community, voluntary and other services that can promote independence and promotion.
  • Liaise with the customer (and others in their network) to build a relationship with a Navigator volunteer. This will include matching service user and volunteer for shared interests, age range, etc.
  • Identify key initial areas for action, supported by Advice Workers if necessary, liaising with other services to ensure a joint approach to supporting the customer.
  • Supervising the volunteers, ensuring that the customer and volunteer are able to reflect on, and monitor the outcomes being achieved.
  • Recruit, train and support the volunteers.
  • Develop a robust and safe set of processes for volunteer management.
  • Ensure training includes the “Making Every Contact Count” approach.
  • Ensure that all performance targets are met.

Other Tasks

  • Responsible for recruiting, inducting, training and supporting volunteers to help meet the objectives of the Navigator Service.
  • Develop and maintain working partnerships with voluntary organisations, volunteer recruitment centres, websites and charities to promote the service and opportunities.
  • Develop a volunteer training programme.
  • Assess the training needs of volunteers ensuring they have the required knowledge and skills to needed to be successful in their roles.
  • Responsible for matching recruited volunteers with customers.
  • Responsible for supervising volunteers and identify any issues or difficulties and monitor the customer/volunteer relationship.
  • Ensure volunteers are rewarded for their contributions to the service and feel valued as part of the organisation e.g. organising an events.
  • Produce and maintain an up to date volunteer contact database.
  • Responsible for ensuring accurate volunteer records of supervision, activity, expenses, visits and training.
  • Undertake all administrative work relating to the programme.
  • Achieve agreed targets around volunteer recruitment and retention.
  • Contribute to the development, implementation and maintenance of appropriate policies, procedures and practices to ensure the effective running of the volunteer programme.
  • Adhere to all policies and procedures and systems put in place by Staffordshire Housing Association as relevant to your role and service delivery.
  • Undertake such tasks as may be reasonably requested by the HIA manager.

Being a Staffordshire Housing Association Employee

The culture at Staffordshire Housing Association is built upon some core beliefs and practices. All staff are expected to embody our beliefs in their behaviours and in the work that they do.

Equality & Diversity

We arepassionate about equality and diversity. We have a diverse customer base, and we are sensitive to their cultural needs, life circumstances and health issues. We treat all staff equally, and we value the different skills and experiences that different people bring to our organisation.

Customers at Heart

Customers come first. We listen, understand and communicate effectively, and we aim to exceed our customers’ expectations.

Teamwork

We have a ‘one team’ approach, working with openness and honesty in a collaborative way.

Learning and Development

We are a learning organisation, always looking to increase our knowledge and to find new and innovative ways of working. We offer core training programmes for all staff, as well as job-specific courses and events. We offer the opportunity to increase your skills and knowledge by joining cross-team working parties such as staff forum, continuous improvement groups and project teams.

Flexibility

We believe in work/life balance, and we have a policy to support this and enable staff to make requests for a wide variety of flexible working arrangements. Flexibility is a two-way process, and in return we may occasionally ask you to work outside of normal office hours, or to attend our staff conference on a Saturday.

Our Code of Conduct and Standing Orders must be adhered to at all times.

Person Specification

Criteria / Essential / Desirable
Qualifications/Training /
  • Good level of general education, literacy and numeracy to GCSE or equivalent standard

Skills/Abilities /
  • Ability to work with and engage older, disabled and vulnerable people
  • Understanding of issues facing vulnerable older people who do not have supportive family or friends
  • Excellent communication skills, including listening skills.
  • Ability to promote services/referral information to external services within the city
  • Excellent networker

Experience /
  • Knowledge of local resources for older and disabled people
/ •Experience of working with older or disabled people
•Experience of volunteering
•Experience of delivering group and 1:1 sessions for hard to engage customers who need to develop confidence and skills.
•Knowledge of the care system
•Experience of recruiting and managing volunteers
Competencies / Engaging with our customers:
  • Ambitious about customer service and seek to exceed customer expectations
  • Supports others in acting to meet customer needs
  • Communicating regularly with customers and involving them in solutions
Working as one team:
  • Delegates effectively, i.e. plans, clearly communicates, trains if necessary, offers support and monitors progress
  • Motivates others in a variety of ways, including talking about team success
  • Facilitates discussions in order to manage and monitor team performance
  • Goes out of their way to support colleagues and partners
Generates solutions and delivers results:
  • Thinks beyond the obvious to find solutions, encourages others to generate ideas
  • Considers value for money when implementing solutions
  • Takes responsibility for others, ensuring they have resources to deliver solutions
Embracing change:
  • Helps others to focus on the positive
  • Motivates those who are resistant to change
Learning and developing:
  • Ensures others keep up-to-date with policies and procedures and the business
  • Takes responsibility for own learning
  • Ensures others take ownership for their own learning and development
Leading by example:
  • Understands the strengths of their team members and uses those strengths appropriately
  • Gives praise for the things we do well
  • Addresses underperformance and encourages improvement

Miscellaneous /
  • Confident about visiting customers in their own homes
  • Satisfactory enhanced DBS (previously CRB) check
  • Strong personal commitment to adhere to the Association’s Equality and Diversity Policy
  • Access to a vehicle and a full driving licence for work purposes

1 of 7