Senior Advocate

Hours: 28 hours per week, worked over 4-5 days Monday–Friday.

We are looking for a Senior Advocate who will have day to day responsibility for the running and promotion of the advocacy service in Dorset.

You will manage a pool of advocates which involves recruitment, supporting them through induction and by conducting supervision and best practice meetings, ensuring the provisions of the service we offer to children and young people is to a high standard.

You will be responsible in managing the advocacy referrals and allocating these to the most appropriate advocate to meet the needs of the child or young person, whilst also carrying a small caseload of advocacy referrals yourself where you will provide independent and confidential advocacy to children and young people to empower them to express their wishes and feelings in decision that affect their lives to ensure that their voices are heard.

You will help drive the performance of the service by monitoring the referrals, activity and budgets, and using bespoke system, to prepare statistical and qualitative data reports for monitoring meetings to evidence service target achievements. This will also enable you to identify recurring themes and concerns which can be escalated.

This role also provides the opportunity to work in co-operation with other NYAS services and departments and well as acting the link between NYAS and the local authority.

For more information and to apply, please visit our website.

In order to meet the requirements of the role, you must live within the geographical area.

Requirements for the role include:

• Proven experience in working with children and young people in a social care setting, particularly children in care
  
• Proven experience of supervising staff and /or volunteers
  
• Experience and understanding of child protection/vulnerable adult safeguarding procedures
  
• An understanding of the importance of listening to children and young people without bias or prejudice
  
• An ability to communicate effectively and to a high standard both orally and in writing to a wide range of people.
  
  Note to candidates: We will be actively interviewing for this position, so please apply early, as we may close this vacancy early when we receive a high number of applications.
  
  

  In return for joining NYAS, we offer the following benefits:
  
  

  • pro rata of 26 days annual leave plus bank holidays
    
  • Salary sacrifice pension contributions
    
  • Additional sick pay
    
  • Enhanced pay for family friendly leave
    
  • Health care plan
    
  • Employee assistance programme
    
  • Cycle to work
    
  • Learning and development oppotunities