Support Worker - Hackney

Location: Hackney Adventure Playground, Spring Lane, Big Hill, Hackney, London E5 9HQ

Hours: 15 hours per week worked across Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

Contract: Fixed term until February 2027.

Salary: £10,360 per annum

Role Overview: Supporting the Play Service Manager of a specialist Adventure Playground, which is part of a National Charity. Working to a strengths‑based paradigm, the Support Worker will take a neuro‑affirming approach to autism and ADHD, valuing lived experience and recognising AuDHD traits as valid differences rather than deficits. The role focuses on reducing barriers, meeting physical needs, and enabling the manager to work effectively and sustainably in ways that align with their strengths, energy, and communication style. All support will be collaborative, consent‑led, and responsive, with approaches agreed together, adjusted as needed, and reviewed regularly to ensure they reflect changing needs.

Key Responsibilities

• Physical and sensory support: Adjusting the environment to support regulation, focus, reduce sensory overload and reduce the risk of compromising back health/movement. Proactive planning to have systems and responses in place in case of overwhelm, anxiety or stress. Provide support when signs of overwhelm appear, including supporting regulation, reducing demands, or adjusting the environment. Offering practical support with mobility, care and back‑related needs during periods of pain. Prompting and supporting regular breaks (e.g., comfort breaks, movement, hydration and food) in ways that feel helpful rather than interruptive.
• Communication support: Support facilitating effective, clear, respectful communication within the core and wider staff teams and with external partners. Helping interpret or clarify others' communication when it may be indirect, ambiguous, or challenging to process. Supporting others in understanding the manager's communication style, tone, and intent, including times when they have difficulty framing words and have reduced language capacity. Working in ways that reduce the impact of rejection sensitivity, including careful framing of feedback, expectations, and challenging information. Adapting information and new materials into formats and learning styles that are accessible and meaningful for them. Providing support with tasks involving potential conflict or heightened emotional load e.g. staff appraisals, performance management discussions, responding to queries. Gently supporting awareness of rigid or fixed patterns of thinking when these create barriers and exploring alternative perspectives collaboratively rather than prescriptively. Hearing/auditory processing.
• Organisation, data handling and administrative support: Support in creating and maintaining consistent, logical filing systems (physical and digital). Supporting the review, restructuring, and re‑categorisation of existing organisational systems. Collaboratively building in regular review points for organisational systems, documenting processes clearly, and supporting others to follow them. Assisting in identifying and exploring software/tools to support work. Excel/MS Office systems. Supporting financial administration, such as petty cash, expense reports, and invoices. Taking minutes for meetings and supporting accurate record‑keeping. Assisting in collating information for reports. Supporting the development of systems for staff training and education e.g. videos, site‑based training, accessible resources.
• Scheduling, prioritising and task support: Managing schedules, diaries and appointments. Helping co‑ordinate site rotas, meetings and team schedules. Reminding and supporting attendance at personal appointments that impact work. Answering and screening phone calls, when appropriate. Collaboratively drafting, sending and managing emails and letters. Supporting task completion by providing ongoing prompts and reminders where needed, recognising that one‑off prompts may not be sufficient. Working together to identify priorities and set aside protected time for key tasks. Supporting awareness of organisational changes, administrative requirements, and new policies relevant to the playground. Exploring and reviewing task‑management tools and software together. Identifying personal triggers or pressure points in advance and planning supportive strategies.

Person Specification

• Empathy and Patience
• Creativity and Initiative
• Professional Integrity
• Resilience
• Comfortable around active, outdoor and creative play in an Adventure Playground environment.
• Confident IT user, able to navigate bespoke database systems; MS Outlook; MS Excel and MS Word.
• Strong organisational skills – Ability to manage time, tasks, and priorities efficiently and calmly.
• Ability to work as part of a Team demonstrating a cooperative, positive approach to working within a group.
• Effective communicator, with understanding and practical experience of different communication styles.
• Experience working in a collaborative, consensual and supportive manner with a flexible, non‑confrontational and personalised approach.
• Understanding of the presentation of stimming, masking, demand avoidance and AUdhd profiles.
• Experience of working with/supporting disabled children and young people.
• Experience working within the disability, SEND, Social Care, Play or youth sectors; therapeutic/arts.
• Confident with different forms of social media.
• Knowledge around neurodiversity issues and contemporary theories such as Monotropism, Double Empathy, Language hypothesis, Neurodiversity paradigm.

Location: Most work will be on‑site in Hackney, but there will sometimes be meetings/training/visits off‑site. There may occasionally be travel outside London. When the manager is physically unable to get to the site, then work from home options may be available.

This role will require an enhanced DBS for Child and Adult workforce.