Assessment & Support Specialist

This Role: Assessment & Support Specialist - Full time Fixed Term Contract 12 Month (Maternity Cover)

Hours: 37.5hrs per week

Location: Beeston, Nottingham, NG9 1LA - Hybrid Working Pattern

Salary: £35,642

Our Assessment & Support Hub at MTVH acts as a gateway to internal support services and teams, and a central source of expertise and oversight on all areas of support within our organisation. This department takes on a coordination role for the most complex of support cases. As an Assessment & Support Specialist you will manage a respond to a range of concerns, referrals and casework that come into the Hub. Our goal is to work with our colleagues to reduce risk and achieve positive outcomes for customers. To achieve this, as well as your core work of advising and coordinating, you may also need to offer practical case management support to help colleagues build their own skills and confidence.

Key Responsibilities & outcomes

• Receive referrals from across MTVH and conduct initial triage, assessments, and action planning, in partnership with colleagues. Determine the most appropriate team to lead support and overall approach to management of the case.
• Support colleagues in the management of support cases, providing advice, coaching, resources, and practical support - minimising risks and achieving positive outcomes for customers.
• Where needed, support colleagues managing cases by helping to complete referrals to statutory agencies, attending multiagency meetings, and collaborating with other professionals involved – always with the aim of building the skill and confidence of the case owner.
• Maintain accurate records of all casework, and support colleagues in this. Ensure information is stored, shared and acted on appropriately.
• Liaise with external agencies to support good cross sector working, and to minimise risks and achieve positive outcomes for customer.
• Maintain oversight of support cases at varying levels of complexity and risk to ensure good join-up across the organisation and wider system and all risks are identified and understood.
• Complete, or support colleagues to complete, ongoing risk assessments for all cases – these will include both standard tenancy-based risk assessments, and specialist tools such as the ‘Dash’ checklist.
• Take a holistic view of all casework and concerns raised and cover all areas of customer support – including poverty, safeguarding, money and benefits, unmet social needs, domestic abuse, and mental health.
• Get alongside colleagues to help them increase their skill and confidence in providing support to our customers and managing risk Maintain awareness, knowledge and understanding of key areas of customer risk for MTVH, including safeguarding children and adults at risk, domestic abuse, community safety, ASB, housing and environmental factors, contextual safeguarding, tenancy sustainment and the impact of multiple risk factors.
• Review issues raised under the Additional Customer Requirements policy, taking appropriate action to respond to these.
• Build and maintain highly effective and positive relationships with other colleagues across the directorate and the organisation.

Skills & Experience

• Excellent communications skills (including written, verbal, presentations, and IT literacy)
• Experience of frontline service delivery in housing, social care, or aligned sector.
• Experience supporting or coaching colleagues; or advising on an area of specialism.
• Experience working in one or more of the following specialist areas: Domestic abuse, mental health, adult social care (in particular, unmet care needs), Care & Support service delivery or ASB.
• Experience coaching colleagues and partnering to build skills and confidence.
• Experience of working as part of a team to share work and solve complex issues as a group.
• Experience working with multiple agencies to coordinate support for an individual.
• Experience working with complex, emotive, and distressing situations; and able to support themselves and colleagues appropriately.
• Knowledge of relevant legislation and statutory frameworks, particularly relating to the role of housing providers.
• Good understanding of housing, care and local public service delivery landscapes

To meet our commitment to providing safe, high quality services to our customers we will complete a basic level background check with the Disclosure and Barring service, once an offer of employment is made. A new check will be carried out on a 3 yearly basis. The cost of a DBS will be paid for by the organisation and as part of our onboarding process.

Please note :- we do not currently offer visa sponsorship.

What’s in it for you?

Our benefits include:-

• 28 days annual leave plus 8 bank holidays (pro rata for part time) per year
• 2 volunteering days per year for things like helping out in local communities
• An additional ‘Beliefs day’ once a year to have an extra a day off
• Enhanced pension with matched contributions of up to 9%
• Life assurance cover 3 x your salary
• Health cash plan scheme for your everyday healthcare needs which you can add your family members too
• Tenancy deposit – interest free loan to help with rental deposits
• Access to extensive learning and training opportunities with Wisebox platform
• Colleague virtual social platform with our workplace pages where you can keep up to date with the organisational activity and link in with colleagues
• Career progression across the organisation with our mentoring programme and apprenticeships
• We are committed to the wellbeing of our colleagues and support this as an organisation

About us

Learn more about our benefits and organisation by viewing our attached document

Our promise

Here at Metropolitan Thames Valley Housing (MTVH) we want to capture the value that difference brings and are committed to promoting equality, diversity and inclusion. We work collaboratively ‘Serving people better every day’ to educate, support and develop all of our diverse employees and the communities that we serve.

We want every employee and every customer to feel comfortable enough to be their true self and are working tirelessly in the background to create an environment that encourages our employees to challenge non-inclusive behaviours and to be mindful of their own and other’s wellbeing.

Our core values of Dare, Care and Collaborate demonstrate that we are a people focused business, solving social issues by working together!

We reserve the right to close this vacancy early if a suitable candidate is found so we do encourage you to complete the application as soon as possible to avoid disappointment.