Housing Rights Worker - Shelter Scotland

Do you have some experience of advice work, preferably with a focus on housing issues, and a real desire to advance your specialist level knowledge? Then join Shelter Scotland as a Housing Rights Worker and you could soon be playing a vital role in helping to identify and resolve the homelessness and bad housing issues facing local communities.

About the Team: Community Team

There are three Community Teams – North, West and East. These teams of housing rights workers engage with and activate communities in delivering insight and evidence and targeted interventions, to address local issues and contribute towards the Shelter Scotland Housing Emergency campaign for structural change. We work to the three equal parts of our Community Purpose:

• We challenge bad practice: In the face of Scotland’s housing emergency, we will hold local duty bearers to account and defend people’s rights.  
• We build capacity: The supply issues at the heart of the Housing Emergency in Scotland create an unsustainable demand for housing services in Shelter Scotland, across the sector and in sectors traditionally beyond housing. We build capacity within affected organisations and groups to respond with and for the people they support.   
• We strengthen our case for change: We work closely with our Comms and Advocacy colleagues by providing useful insights and context about what is happening locally. We create opportunities for people with lived experience of housing and homelessness to lend us stories which bring the real issues behind the statistics to life.

Our North Team covers regions from Fife northwards and operates out of our two regional offices in Dundee and Aberdeen with the team spread across these locations.

About the role

In our North Community Team, we are engaged in our local communities to understand the housing issues people are facing to gather insight and evidence around the broken system, and we apply our expertise to work toward solutions. We seek to work with and within communities to build capacity and drive action around housing rights and the housing emergency. Lived experience of the housing emergency is at the heart of everything we do.

About you

Already with some relevant experience, you’re used to working with a variety of internal and external stakeholders, have great time management skills and enjoy collaborating with people from other teams and organisations. The ability to listen to, engage and empower individuals and communities will be key. So will your willingness to challenge practice and hold people to account – including influencing decision makers. Adept at presenting information and arguments in clear and compelling ways, you have a real enthusiasm for delivering workshops and presentations too. What’s more, you’re a creative problem solver with an innate ability to gather evidence and identify insights, issues and trends and are proficient using Word, Excel, email, the internet and in-house CRM systems.

Apply to be part of our team and be the change you want to see in society.

Benefits 

We offer a wide range of benefits, including 30 days of annual leave, enhanced family friendly policies, pension and interest free travel loans. Our employees also have access to a tenancy deposit loan, payroll giving, cycle to work scheme and an employee assistance programme.

Shelter Scotland helps thousands of people every year struggling with bad housing or homelessness through our advice, support and legal services. And we campaign to make sure that, one day, no one will have to turn to us for help. We’re here so no one has to fight bad housing or homelessness on their own.

We are happy to talk about flexible working, personal growth, and to promote a workplace where you can be yourself and achieve success based only on your merit.

About the team

Our three Communities Teams are responsible for identifying, investigating and intervening in housing and homelessness practice issues. We engage with our local communities to understand the issues people are facing and apply expert housing knowledge, insight and analysis to identify solutions to them. As well as providing advice and advocacy for individuals, we also use our insight, relationships and influence to drive systemic change, always ensuring that lived experience is at the heart of everything we do.

About Shelter Scotland 

Shelter Scotland is Scotland’s national housing and homelessness charity. Our vision is of a home for everyone in Scotland. For over 50 years, the way we drive change has remained the same. We advise and support people in housing need today and use the insight we gain to inform our campaigns to change tomorrow. We also raise professional standards for those working in Scotland’s housing and homelessness sector by offering a broad range of training courses.

Home is a human right. It’s our foundation and where we thrive. Yet everyday thousands of people are being devastated by the housing emergency.

We exist to defend the right to a safe home. Because home is everything.

We need ambitious, passionate people to join us. This is your chance to play a part in the fundamental change we are striving to achieve.

Our enemy is the social injustice at the core of the escalating housing emergency. To win this fight, we must be representative of the people we are here to help and those who support our movement. In all our people decisions, we take pride in being inclusive, equitable and transparent. We are committed to combating racism both within and outside Shelter Scotland. We welcome you on our journey to becoming truly anti-racist.

Safeguarding statement 

Safeguarding is everyone's business. Shelter Scotland is committed to protecting the health, wellbeing and human rights of those we support, and enabling them to live free from harm, abuse and neglect. All our staff will be expected to observe professional standards of behaviour and conduct their work in line with our Safeguarding Policies.

Shelter Scotland does not accept unsolicited CVs from external recruitment agencies nor accept the fees associated with them.