Witness Care Officer

This is an exciting time to be working as a Witness Care Officer for the Metropolitan Police Service. In addition to large-scale transformation, there's the unique and ever-evolving challenge of policing London. This means that as a Witness Care Officer there are more opportunities for you to get involved with making London the safest global city in a time of unprecedented change within the UK's largest Police Service.

The Witness Care Unit is responsible for maintaining contact with victims and witnesses of crime and complying with the Victims Codes of Practice (VCOP). Candidates, please note that this is a full-time role, and the posting is for a minimum of two years except for moves on promotion.

Role Involves:

• Being a single point of contact for victims and witnesses who will be attending Court.
• Warning police officers, victims, and witnesses to attend Court.
• Informing victims and witnesses of the outcome of the case that they have been involved in post sentencing.
• Identifying where an enhanced service may be required (i.e., vulnerable victims of crime such as domestic abuse, serious sexual offences or those involving children or the elderly).
• Offering the services of support agencies to vulnerable and intimidated victims and witnesses.
• Liaising with the Crown Prosecution Service and other key stakeholders such as the Probation Service and Witness Services.
• Completing assessments to identify individual needs.
• Liaising with the officer in the case for an assessment to be completed for individuals involved in serious offences.
• Recording all written and oral communications clearly and concisely and in a timely manner.
• Ensuring compliance with relevant legislation and MPS policies.
• Working until 6.00pm on a rota basis.
• All contact with Victims and Witnesses is via email and telephone and not face-to-face.
• There are various IT systems that you will be required to use; training will be given, however you must be IT literate.

Essential For The Role:

• Experience within a Customer Service environment is desirable but not essential.
• Strong Interpersonal skills and the ability to relate to a wide variety of people.
• Ability to work both alone and within a team.
• Ability to work without close supervision, to make decisions and establish priorities amongst conflicting demands.
• IT literate with the capacity to learn new applications.
• Ability to effectively negotiate and encourage whilst maintaining an awareness of Data Protection Acts and its implications.
• Ability to prioritise workloads on a daily basis ensuring deadlines are met.
• Able to proactively manage and prioritise own workloads.

Competencies and Values:

• We are emotionally aware at level 1
• We take ownership at level 1
• We support and inspire at level 1

The following values will be tested against during sift: Empathy, Integrity.

Disability Confident Statement:

The Met is committed to being an equitable (fair and impartial) and inclusive employer for disabled people, striving to have a diverse and representative workforce at all levels. We encourage applications from people from the widest possible range of backgrounds, cultures and experiences. We particularly welcome applications from people with disabilities and long-term conditions, ethnic minority groups and women.

As a Disability Confident Leader, the Met has committed to making disability equality part of our everyday practice. We ensure that people with disabilities and those with long term conditions have the opportunities to fulfil their potential and realise their aspirations.

The Met is committed to making reasonable adjustments to the recruitment process to ensure disabled applicants can perform at their best. If you need any reasonable adjustments or changes to the application and recruitment process, we ask that you include this information within your application form. All matters will be treated in strict confidence.

Please note, if you are applying for a police officer role or to become a police community support officer (PCSO) or designated detention officer (DDO), there is a minimum requirement that you must pass a job-related fitness test (JRFT) at point of entry. This does not apply to police staff roles.