Organisation: Gingerbread
35 hours per week
£33,767 per annum
Location: Kentish Town (Currently Remote)
Deadline: 19 April, 2021
The provision of advice to single parents is at the heart of what Gingerbread does. Our Single Parent Helpline provides specialist advice on social security law, welfare benefits and tax credits, and child maintenance law; and generalist advice, information and signposting on other social welfare issues including family law, contact arrangements, housing, adult education and employment rights for parents.
In the current economic climate, our ability to offer specialist, independent and accurate advice is more important than ever, and in such a fast-changing environment it is vital that we maintain our advice expertise.
The Advice Worker will contribute to Gingerbread’s vision of a society in which single parent families are valued and where they and their children are treated equally and fairly.
The Advice Worker will deliver our Advice Service to single parents, working on our Single Parent Helpline, and contributing to our digital Advice Service offer.
Key Tasks and Responsibilities
The postholder -
- will provide specialist advice to single parents on social security law, namely welfare benefits and tax credits, and child maintenance law.
- will provide accurate and up to date generalist advice, information and signposting to single parents on a variety of social welfare issues including family law, contact arrangements, housing, adult education and employment rights for parents.
- will take a lead in developing an advice subject area under supervision of the Advice Service Manager and disseminating information and updates to the rest of the team and other teams within Gingerbread, as required.
- will work in collaboration with the Information team to identify the need for new information resources and ensure existing resources are regularly updated.
- will ensure internal advice resources, including detailed advice tools, are accurate and up to date.
- will identify and report social policy issues arising from the Helpline, and work in collaboration with the Policy and Campaigns Team to progress policy matters as needed.
- will provide advice primarily via telephone, but also via webchat and on occasion, via our website or by email.
- will help to deliver our digital advice offering to single parents, including advice via video that may be shared on our website and our Social Media platforms.
- will help to develop digital advice products and tools and contribute to digital content development.
- will undertake ongoing research and keep informed of new legislation and changes to existing law and policy on issues affecting single parents and undertake training as appropriate.
- will keep accurate records of enquiries received and advice given and to participate in the monitoring, evaluation and quality assurance activities of the Advice Service.
- will actively participate in advice development activities, including meetings, the delivery of internal training sessions and peer to peer support activities.
- will be willing to work outside of core hours to enable Gingerbread to run evening advice sessions (anticipated to be a maximum of twice a week and currently the service runs to 7pm latest).
- will maintain excellent helpline advice skills (through ongoing training and participation in debrief sessions) in order to deal appropriately with issues arising in the course of advice work to single parents such as: safeguarding, domestic violence, self-harm, suicide risk and mental health issues.
- will assist in the maintenance of quality standards.
- will undertake administrative tasks required and service their own administrative needs.
- will be comfortable working in an environment where performance is monitored on a regular and ongoing basis, to ensure we provide a quality and efficient service to single parents.
- may provide moderation of our online forum, signposting single parents where appropriate and flagging safeguarding concerns wherever they arise, in accordance with our safeguarding policies and procedures.
To apply, visit https://www.gingerbread.org.uk/what-we-do/jobs/advice-worker/
