Homelessness Prevention & Options Officer

This is a Full Time Fixed Term Position (Maternity Leave).

ROLE AND PURPOSE

The Homelessness Prevention & Options Officer will deliver high quality and empathetic homelessness advice and assistance services to customers, ensuring that the customer’s experience of the service is at the heart of all they do with an emphasis on preventing homelessness so that the need for homelessness relief and temporary accommodation services is minimised. Where it is not possible to prevent homelessness, they will take action to ensure that people’s ongoing housing solution is as sustainable as possible to avoid the cycle of repeat homelessness. They will give early advice to those concerned about homelessness, arranging mitigations from a range of options to prevent situations escalating.

They will investigate homeless approaches in accordance with the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 (HRA) ensuring that customers are given good quality advice and that their expectations are managed empathetically and that duties owed to them are identified and discharged. They will make independent decisions on complex matters in accordance with legislation and policies and procedures and provide guidance to colleagues in Housing Access as necessary.

The Housing Access Service is a multi-disciplinary service which is the front door service to access housing in the city. It provides a comprehensive housing advice and options service designed to prevent homelessness and rough sleeping, help customers find realistic and sustainable housing solutions which meet their needs from a range of options and allocate available council homes in a timely way.

PRINCIPAL ACCOUNTABILITIES:

• Provides a professional, empathetic and high-quality service in response to customers approaching the service for advice and assistance which may be in person, over the phone, in writing or via IT systems. This will include being the first point of contact for colleagues and partners who have enquiries about homelessness or cases that the Housing Assessment and Advice team need to escalate. Customer base includes clients experiencing trauma, addiction and those who can be hard to engage and/or present with challenging behaviour (emotional, obstructive, verbally aggressive and hostile).
• Investigates and identifies the individual housing needs of customers who are homeless or could be threatened with homelessness in the future to determine and discharge the Council’s statutory homelessness obligations, with an emphasis on early prevention. This includes (but is not limited to) holding a personal caseload, advising customers on a range of issues relating to their current and onward accommodation options, identifying and facilitating mitigations that will prevent homelessness, carrying out interviews, mediation and negotiation with accommodation providers, arranging temporary accommodation and advising the customer of their rights in respect of the Homelessness Reduction Act and the council’s Allocations Policy. This will require carrying work out in a range of settings including council offices, customers’ homes or community settings.
• Provides homelessness advice and assistance outreach services in a range of settings including council access points, voluntary sector agencies and other community settings.
• Ensures that the accommodation solutions arranged are as sustainable as possible by ensuring that pre-tenancy work identifies any issues and facilitating the mitigating actions such as ongoing tenancy support, benefit maximisation advice and assistance and arranging furniture packages within agreed protocols.
• Maintains an expert knowledge of wider Housing Access Team priorities and issues, relevant legislation, policies, procedures and trends in order to make decisions on the cases that come through the Homelessness Prevention & Options Team. These may include (but are not limited to) making decisions that legal duties have been discharged, that a priority should be awarded or removed and that a customer is intentionally homeless.
• Administers their workload efficiently ensuring accurate and professional information is recorded on systems as appropriate. Collates statistics where required regarding team activity to feed into performance management activity and ensures that the required information is fed back to government HCLIC (homelessness) returns.
• Prioritises their own caseload and also collaborates with their team to identify pressure points and agree and contribute to team priorities, to meet the demands of the service and ensure targets are met.
• Attends case conferences and represents the team at multi-agency meetings and events as required.
• Mentors new starters to the service as deemed appropriate.
• To promote and safeguard the welfare of children, young people and/or vulnerable adults.
• The Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 and associated legislation places responsibilities for health and safety on Hull City Council, as your employer and you as an employee of the council. In addition to the Councils overall duties, the post holder has personal responsibility for their own health, safety and wellbeing and that of other employees; additional and more specific responsibilities are identified in the Council’s Corporate H&S policy.

Compensation Grades: GRADES 6.

Pay Ranges: £29,540.00 - £32,061.00

Benefits of Working of Hull City Council:

• A competitive salary
• An excellent pension through the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS)
• Initially 23 days annual leave depending on length of service. You will also get eight public holidays per year, and three additional days off, one in May/August and one during the Christmas/New year period
• Career development and learning experiences from a range of training courses and learning methods
• Supportive and forward-thinking culture
• Great career development opportunities

Please ensure that you complete and submit your application by midnight prior to the closing date. Please ensure that your application demonstrates how you meet the essential criteria against the person specification as listed in the job description.