About Outward

For 50 years, Outward has been providing high-quality support and care services to vulnerable people across London, predominantly in North and East London. Established by families seeking alternatives to institutional care, we’ve grown into a respected provider of person-centred support for adults with learning disabilities, autism, mental health needs and complex needs. We support over 1,000 people across nine boroughs, guided by our core values: engage, enable and empower, and we work in partnership with individuals and their families to promote choice, control and inclusion.

Outward is proud to be an accredited Living Wage Employer. This means we are committed to paying the Real Living Wage – not just the government minimum or national living wage – to our frontline Support Workers and other eligible staff. We recognise the value of the work our teams do, and we are committed to ensuring fair pay that reflects the true cost of living. The Real Living Wage is updated annually by the Living Wage Foundation, and Outward remains committed to aligning our pay accordingly.

About the Role

We are looking for a proactive and passionate Community Outreach Officers to join our dedicated team. Outreach is a community-based service designed to support adults with learning disabilities to maintain or gain independence by supporting people to learn new skills, find new social activities, deal with housing matters, get support around money management, benefit applications and paying bills as well maintaining or achieving a healthy lifestyle. This role offers a unique opportunity to combine direct support responsibilities with service coordination and expanding professional networks with other professionals.

As a Community Outreach Officer, you will play a key role in empowering the people we support to live independent and fulfilling lives. You’ll provide high-quality support, while also coordinating day to day elements of your individual service delivery such as support planning, key working, rota session times. You will work closely with the Deputy or Team Manager and play an active role in ensuring our services are person-centred, well-led, and delivered with Outward’s core values of engage, enable, and empower.

Requirements

Your Responsibilities

The role of an Outreach Support Worker can vary from a ‘Life Coach’ style of support, to more hands on practical support where some individuals will never be able to achieve independence in certain areas. We signpost, prompt, encourage, challenge and actively assist people to make and reach their goals.

This is not a prescriptive or exhaustive list, and is provided for illustrative purposes only, but the tasks completed by Outreach workers could easily include active assistance with the following:

·         Claiming benefits – helps with filling out forms, providing advice, contact with DWP services, 

·         Budgeting – preparing and monitoring a budget plan / diary

·         Employment – encouragement to apply for jobs, assistance with completing CV, application forms, etc.

·         Meaningful activities – encouraging the customer to think of options, finding and presenting opportunities, encouraging and monitoring participation

·         Identifying and actioning issues around Safeguarding

·         Tenancy at risk – help to seek legal advice, contact with landlord to delay / stop legal action, support customer through court process

·         Health – promoting a good diet and exercise, linking with GP and specialist services.

·         Attending Appointments and providing detailed written feedback afterward

·         Household chores, cooking and shopping - prompting and encouraging customer to undertake these chores, skill-sharing and supervision on a limited (and reducing) basis to encourage self-reliance.

·         Accessing community resources – accompanying to appointments and activities on a limited (and reducing) basis to encourage self-reliance, signposting and sourcing options. An HRFS worker may find the best way to support on any of the above needs is to refer and support the person to access local services (e.g. CAB, Jobcentre, and GP).

But not normally:

·         any aspect of hands-on personal care (Though prompting and encouragement required)

·         supervision / prompting of medication on a regular basis.

·         solely general social contact / befriending

·         holding and distributing customer finances

·         formal counselling

·         cooking / cleaning for the customer (and with the customer on a limited and reducing basis only)

Essential Criteria

• Good understanding of safeguarding and risk management in a care/support setting
• Knowledge of health and safety issues within supported housing or care environments
• Understanding of confidentiality, GDPR, and data protection principles
• Staff must have access to a smartphone capable of receiving SMS messages and installing authentication apps for secure systems access
• Right to Work in the UK. Please note: Outward will not provide visa sponsorship.

Desirable Criteria

• NVQ Level 2 or 3 in Health and Social Care (or equivalent)
• Additional training in PBS, safeguarding, or housing-related legislation

How to Apply

The above is not an exhaustive list of requirements for the role.

If you think you are who we are looking for, please submit a CV and statement detailing how you feel your experiences meets the requirements of the role by referring to the Job Responsibilities and the Person Specification.

There is no specific closing date for this advert. We reserve the right to close this vacancy early if we receive a sufficient number of suitable applications for the role. Therefore, if you are interested, please submit your application as early as possible. It would be great to hear from you.

Benefits

We value everything our staff do for the people we support, so we provide a great benefits package:

• 25 days Annual Leave excluding Bank Holidays (pro rata for part time)
• Comprehensive Learning & Development Programme

• Cycle-to-Work Scheme
• Death in Service Benefit
• Health Assured – Employee Assistance Programme
• Eye care Vouchers
• Flu Jab Reimbursement
• Pension Scheme
• Purchase Additional Annual Leave
• Refer-a-Friend Scheme

Diversity and Safeguarding at Outward:

We are committed to equal opportunities and welcome applications from all sections of the community.

Outward applies its Equal Opportunities Policy at all stages of recruitment and selection.  Shortlisting, interviewing and selection is carried out without regard to gender, sexual orientation, marital status, colour, race, nationality, ethnic or national origins, religion or belief, age or trade union membership. 

As an employer, who aspire to become Disability Confident Committed, we aim to ensure that a fair and proportionate number of disabled applicants that meet the minimum criteria for this position will be offered an interview. Please indicate clearly at the beginning of your supporting statement if you have a disability (as defined by the Equality Act 2010), and you wish to be considered for an Offer Of an Interview (OOI) Please note that the OOI is available to disabled candidates only. Regrettably, any false declaration of disability in order to secure an interview will impact on your overall application.

Outward is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of adults at risk and expects all staff to share this commitment. If the post you apply for involves working with or having access to adults at risk and/or their records, we will require a DBS for successful candidates.