Down to Earth Development Worker

Location: Office-based (near Euston) with some home working.

Salary/job band: £22,876 or £23,965, depending upon hours (£39,216 full time equivalent), NJC scales 23-25.

Team: Down to Earth.

Contract type: Permanent.

Hours: 21-22 hours per week.

Reports to: Down to Earth co-manager – direct support lead.

Purpose of role

To support the delivery of QSA’s flagship funeral poverty service, Down to Earth, offering direct support for bereaved people on low incomes across the UK.

About Quaker Social Action (QSA)

Quaker Social Action’s mission is twofold. We enable people on low incomes to seek solutions to the issues affecting their lives. We listen and respond to the needs of communities and run practical, sustainable and collaborative projects. Secondly, we share our learning where we see the potential to bring benefit to communities outside of our own – by running professional training, and by speaking truth to power to seek structural change. Our services include crisis support for those unable to afford funerals; practical support for people experiencing homelessness, such as a mobile library and a community kitchen space; and free mindfulness and wellbeing programmes.

What is Down to Earth?

Down to Earth is a service dedicated to providing information, support and advocacy on behalf of people who find themselves struggling to pay for a funeral. Down to Earth delivers free support through online resources and via a national helpline; explaining what is available and appropriate to each individual’s situation and personal beliefs and ultimately helping clients to find a funeral that is both affordable and meaningful. In the last fifteen years, Down to Earth has helped over 9,000 clients. Off the back of our breakthrough Fair Funerals campaign (2014-2018), Down to Earth has continued to advocate for change in the funeral industry and in government, sharing stories and evidence from our ongoing front-line casework as we do so.

What is the role of the Down to Earth development worker?

Our development workers support a caseload of clients directly via our phone helpline. To do this well requires a very sensitive manner, as well as an ability to move practically through the options available to someone. This work involves tailoring support to an individual’s needs and being incredibly organised since many callers will require follow up work over weeks or sometimes months. A typical day may involve providing information about funerals over the phone to bereaved callers, helping clients understand which benefits they may be eligible for, supporting someone with an application to a charity, and developing an online resource. You will need to be a great ambassador for our work, speaking plainly about a subject matter many find difficult. There is an exciting breadth to the service; as we balance the existing support we can offer directly to clients with the sharing of our work and services with partner organisations through training. The rewards will be in having a varied workload, within a friendly work environment and making a direct contribution to the charitable aims of QSA.

What is it like to work for QSA?

Down to Earth talk to people every day who are living through one of the worst times of their lives, so the need for supportive colleagues is high. Due to the nature of the work, the team work more in the office than at home to support each other, with someone in the office every day and the whole team generally working together in the office on a regular day each week. The various teams at QSA undertake very different tasks but there is a strong sense of collaboration and of celebrating the successes of other teams with gusto and goodwill. Our staff are enthusiastic and engaged with what they do, and there is both an openness and a solid commitment to social justice that is visible across the organisation. This is a role – and an organisation – suiting someone who is looking for a close-knit working environment, has a strong inner resilience, who understands the need to be flexible and is ambitious to work as part of a team with a reputation for delivering work of the very highest standard. This role is ideal for someone who enjoys a demanding and fast-paced role and who is comfortable talking about death, funerals and money every day.

Job description - duties & responsibilities

• Directly supporting people to obtain an affordable & meaningful funeral.
• To offer direct support to a caseload of clients over a phone helpline; offering initial guidance and following up by phone and in writing over a sustained period to assist with considering funeral options, booking a funeral and applying for statutory, charitable and other funding.
• To develop a deep level of knowledge about planning and paying for a funeral and dealing with debt arising from a funeral.
• To build up knowledge of different funeral options to provide people with choices when planning a funeral.
• To develop knowledge about other relevant services to signpost people on to.
• To work with colleagues to design and test a range of complementary online tools and downloadable resources.
• To build up awareness of Down to Earth among practitioners who are likely to come into contact with a person who needs to plan a funeral so they can refer smoothly into the service.
• To work within the impact reporting framework for Down to Earth, ensuring all data collection requirements are met, and to share learning from delivery of the project.

Communications and sharing learning from Down to Earth

• To assist with work, as appropriate to role, to help the service meet strategic aims, such as carrying out research or liaising with other agencies like the DWP.
• To work with colleagues on developing ways of sharing our learning with other practitioners, including the development and delivery of training courses.
• To be a strong advocate for the work of Down to Earth, keeping up to date with relevant research, trends and opportunities within this field.
• To work with colleagues to promote learning from Down to Earth through QSA’s online platforms and by liaising with local and national networks as appropriate.

General

• To work within, and actively promote, the policies and procedures of QSA.
• To receive line management, supervision and appraisal from the Down to Earth co-manager – direct support lead.
• Any other duties, as appropriate to role, as agreed by the QSA director.

Person specification

Experience

• Experience of supporting people through complex systems, liaising with other organisations, ideally in a casework capacity.
• Experience of supporting people through a crisis or difficult experience, or issues relating to low income.
• Experience in designing and delivering training sessions is not essential but highly desirable.

Ability

• Ability to manage own workload and to work flexibly.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including a solid working knowledge of Microsoft Office tools.
• Ability to engage with people who have experienced bereavement, with empathy and tact.
• Strong commitment to, and knowledge of, assessing impact.
• Ability to promote and publicise Down to Earth enthusiastically and effectively to individuals and groups.

Knowledge

• Knowledge of end-of-life issues, funerals, bereavement and of debt are all desirable.
• Knowledge of the funeral payments element of the Social Fund is desirable.
• Knowledge of credit and debt as well as budget support is desirable.

Other

• Commitment to and understanding of the role of equity, diversity and inclusion, in the workplace and in service provision.
• A willingness to work within a Quaker ethos, as clarified by the mission statement of QSA.

The recruitment process

Our intention is to be clear and transparent in the recruitment process. We want to be respectful of your time and are aware applying for roles can be time-consuming. By 10am on Monday 7 September we’d like you to send to:

• Your CV, highlighting the areas of your experience pertinent to this role.
• Your supporting statement, explaining why you want this role and your match to the experience, skills and values we’re looking for.
• We also invite you to complete our online equity and diversity monitoring form.

Your application will be acknowledged, and we will let you know if you’ve been shortlisted or not. We will meet shortlisted candidates for interviews on Tuesday 22 September at our office in Euston. To mitigate some of the stress of interviews, we will send you the interview questions in advance. We’re hoping to be able to make decisions that day and make a job offer. However, we may not be able to do this if we want to speak again with a couple of candidates. Being a diverse and inclusive organisation is very important to us. We’re particularly focused on three elements of this: lived experience of poverty; race & heritage; and disability. We actively encourage applications from candidates of diverse cultures, perspectives, and lived experiences. We hope you find this job pack and our recruitment process clear and welcoming. Please let us know if this is not the case. We want to do recruitment well and feedback really helps.

Main terms and conditions of employment

QSA uses the local government pay scales for salaries. Your salary will be on NJC scale point 23-25, which starts at £39,216 (including London weighting) for a full-time/36-hours post and £22,876 or £23,965 for this role. All appointments are made at the bottom of the scale. This is a permanent position. This is a part time post of 21 or 22 hours, to be worked over 3 or 4 days per week, ideally one of those days being Tuesday, the day the Down to Earth team all work from the office. Leave entitlement for a full-time post is 25 days per year, plus 8 bank holidays, with the leave year running from January to December. This increases by 2 days after 3 years of service and a further 3 days after 5 years of service. QSA closes between Christmas and New Year and days falling within this period are not taken from your leave entitlement. QSA pays an additional 6% of salary into the QSA group personal pension, with a 2% staff contributory element. We have probationary periods of six months, and the period of notice is 1 week during the probationary period and four weeks on its completion. QSA has a union recognition agreement with Unite although staff are welcome to join any trade union or none. This is a hybrid role. We see the benefits of being in the office with colleagues on a regular basis and consider 2 days per week in person to be ideal for this role. The successful candidate will be required to obtain a basic DBS check. The Rehabilitation of Offenders Act applies.