JOB DESCRIPTION – Financial Inclusion Worker: Recovery Essentials Project

Job Title

Financial Inclusion Worker: Recovery Essentials Project

Hours of Work

Part-time – 21 hours

Salary (full time salary shown)

Pro rata and dependent on experience:

  • £23,082 pa for experienced advisors to appeal level
  • £21,734pa for advisors with more limited experience, with progression dependent on training and performance related to key tasks (e.g. successful appeals).

Term

This post is fixed term to February 2016.

Location

The project office base is EVOC, 14 Ashley Place. All Financial Inclusion Workers will work on an outreach basis inone or more of 13 locations around the City (see list of delivery partners at end of Job Description). You will be allocated a main host organisation but workers will be allocated to delivery sites on a flexible basis according to demand.

Accountability

The Financial Inclusion Workers report to theProject Manager. Day to day liaison and co-ordination with your allocated host project(s) will also be required.

Context

The Recovery Essentials project was devised and developed by 8 partner drug and alcohol agencies, in response to the pressures welfare reform placed on people affected by substance misuse. This client group includes people who are chaotic substance users who may be homeless and in crisis, to people who are recovering from substance use and making a range of transitions into housing and employability. Clients present with issues across the whole range of welfare benefits and other financial inclusion needs. The Recovery Essentials project seeks to ensure clients who are challenging to support because of their mental health and substance use issues get access to appropriate, high quality support; however the project also seeks to innovate and design new approaches to changing clients’ thinking and attitudes towards managing their benefits and resources. The project will also develop peer support between people affected by or recovering from substance use.

Edinburgh Voluntary Organisations’ Council’s (EVOC) is hosting this project and is the lead accountable body for the shared finance. EVOC’s purpose isto support, promote, develop and represent the Third Sector. We play a key role in supporting pioneering, new and innovative ways of working for Third Sector organisations and community groups that work in Edinburgh. EVOC actively promotes, participates in and contributes to partnership working between the voluntary, public, private and community sectors at a local and national level.

Job Role

The Financial Inclusion Workers play the key role in developing and delivering this two year project from inception to conclusion, ensuring it achieves its objectives, which include:

  • Ensuring people who are homeless or offending and experiencing serious mental health or substance use problems have improved access to a fuller range of welfare advice services
  • Empowering people who are homeless or offending and experiencing serious mental health or substance use problems to have improved confidence when accessing relevant financial products (bank accounts, insurance, savings)

Basic grade:

  • Support to make benefits claims
  • Help to avoid utilities disconnections and address debt issues
  • Help to open bank accounts and savings accounts
  • Help to ensure cheapest tariffs for utilities and best deals on other essential costs
  • Help to consider insurance for belongings and home items

Senior grade:

  • Support to appeal benefits decisions
  • Support to resolve rent arrears

Targets for the project are ambitious and based on the scale of need in partners’ organisations. In addition to direct advice work, we also want Financial Inclusion Workers to develop groups and peer support to enable people to feel more confident to plan and manage their money, and solve problems when these arise. This work needs to take cognisance of the particular needs of people who suffer from addiction in which impulse control is low and shopping is often a comfort activity for people struggling with overcoming other addictions.

We consider innovation is needed in this project as standard approaches to ‘financial education’ are unlikely to address these behavioural issues, and a creative approach is required to work with clients to resolve their benefits and debt issues.

Financial Inclusion Workers must be knowledgeable about all aspects of welfare benefits and debt advice, but should be fully committed to creating a dynamic, action learning approach to finding the best way to work with people affected by substance use and empower them both to feel in control of their finances and to help each other.

Main responsibilities

Financial Inclusion Workers have overall responsibility for the development and delivery of the Recovery Essentials project.

Basic grade:

  • provide 1:1 client work in delivery partner premises, home visits or outreach, as appropriate
  • support a case load of clients referred by delivery partners
  • provide client work which includes support and education to make benefits claims; support and empowerment to renegotiate debts; support to prepare for work capability assessments, appeals and tribunals; education to choose and use financial products and utilities providers; support and advocacy to open bank/credit union accounts; support to change behaviours related to financial inclusion
  • be up to date with all benefits, welfare and debt management issues
  • develop and use information materials appropriate to the client group and with due regard to equalities and literacies issues
  • work to agreed policies, strategies and action plans
  • use project monitoring tools and procedures
  • work to the national standards for advice services and provide work with clients to a high standard
  • work to data protection and confidentiality standards and procedures

Senior grade:

  • provide client work as the above, and support to prepare for and advocacy during work capability assessments, appeals and tribunals;
  • develop and implement programmes of group work on assertiveness, communication, money management, behaviour change to manage compulsive and impulsive spending/overcompensation buying/the ostrich position
  • support and supervision of volunteer peer financial inclusion workers
  • provide advice and guidance to delivery partner staff on advice issues
  • keep case files and thorough recording

Knowledge and skills

Specific knowledge and skills we require which must be evidenced in your application:

All posts
Experience of advice work across the full range of welfare benefits / Tell us about the length and breadth of experience you have in this area, and give one brief example of someone you have helped – what you did and what difference it made
Experience of debt advice work and negotiation with utilities providers, landlords etc / Tell us about the length and breadth of experience you have in this area, and give one brief example of someone you have helped – what you did and what difference it made
Experience of working with vulnerable client groups of substance users and people with mental health problems / Tell us about this and how you have developed or adapted approaches to meet particular needs
Experience of monitoring and evaluation / Tell us about specific approaches you have used - this project will not have a major, bespoke IT system, so we want to see that you can work with approaches that are appropriate to a small, short term project.
Senior grade posts
Experience of working with groups / Tell us about your experience of working with groups – what kind of individuals were in the group and what kind of work you did with the group
Ability to support/adviseother professionals to deal with advice issues / Tell us what support or advice you gave and how it helped
Ability to develop information materials which are accessible to people with low literacy skills / Tell us about specific examples where you helped to design the information provided to clients
Ability to train others / Describe training you have helped to develop or deliver, and what your role was
Experience of contributing to the development of services and working to national standards for advice services / Tell us about how your contribution to the development of services and how this is relevant to the national standards.

We are also interested in these skills/qualities:

  • Driving license
  • Experience of working with people affected by substance misuse
  • Experience of innovation – where you have identified an issue or problem and developed a lasting solution to it

Your application should tell us about your skills and experience, and why you are interested in this role.

Please be concise and address the skills requirements need to see you have the experience we require and we can explore this in more detail if you are invited to interview.

Closing date for this position: 9 am Friday 30 January 2015

Partners involved in this project and the experience they bring:

The Big Issue: The Big Issue Foundation seeks to deliver social & financial inclusion by supporting Big Issue vendors in the self-help process of buying & selling the Big Issue Magazine.

The Castle Project:.Provides access to services such as one to one support, medication, specialist nurses, counselling, and more.

Circle Harbour Project: Works with children and families affected by parental drug/alcohol use and/or imprisonment.

Crew 2000: Drugs counselling, outreach, drop in and training in substance use and sexual health.

Fresh Start: Help for people who have been homeless to get established in their new home.

Grassmarket Community Project: Offers education programs, social enterprise, and social integration activities to support people through transitions in their lives and re-connect disengaged people.

NEDAC: North Edinburgh Drug and Alcohol Centre. Services for those affected by substance use problems.

Serenity Café: Recovery café offering opportunities for volunteering, learning, and a programme of activities for people in recovery.

Simpson House: Counselling for people affected by their own or another’s drug use. Support for people in recovery and for children and young people affected by parental substance use. Also seeing clients at the Rankeillor Initiative and Cunningham House which are part of Simpson House/Crossreach service.

Spittal Street Centre: Community drug problem service.

Transition- Access to Industry: Develops education and training programmes for excluded people that encourage and facilitate access to employment and higher education opportunities.

Turning Point Scotland: Support for people seeking help with substance misuse issues and also people who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless.