Housing Assistant

Housing Assistant – Homeless Prevention and Housing Options 
City Chambers

Salary: £26,337 - £28,835
Hours: 36 per week 

The Homelessness Prevention and Housing Options team is at the frontline for tackling and preventing homelessness in Edinburgh.  An exciting opportunity has arisen for a housing assistant to support housing officers with the prevention and statutory duty requirements to households who are homeless or threatened with homelessness. 

The postholder will provide advice and support to customers to prevent and resolve homelessness by helping them remain in their home, or where this is not possible secure a home.  The role will help with ongoing management of cases, ensuring that homeless applicants are accessing appropriate support, considering their full housing options and bidding appropriately to enable them to secure permanent accommodation.

The role will be administrative with ongoing customer contact, maintaining records and closing cases timeously.  This will enable Housing Officers to focus on the provision of high quality and person-centred case work to assist households to resolve their homelessness. 

The role will fulfil the Council's legislative duties and good practice requirements in collaboration with many other statutory services and partner organisations.  The postholder should be resilient and have excellent organisational skills to work within a busy service area with competing demands.  

This post is subject to a basic disclosure check.

Please note that that at any point in your employment you may be required to work in any one of the four locality offices or High Street at short notice.

We're committed to creating a workplace culture where all our people feel valued, included and able to be their best at work, and we recognise the benefits that a diverse workforce with different values, beliefs, experience, and backgrounds brings to us as an organisation.

As part of our goal to improve our organisational culture and create a great place to work together for the people of Edinburgh, we want to make sure that we're bringing the best people into our roles, not just in their skills and experience but also in their approach to work.

To help achieve this, we're changing the way we interview and assess candidates by moving from a competency-based interview approach to a behavioural and technical (skills for the job) based approach. This new way of interviewing will allow us to assess how you think and how you would bring Our Behaviours of Respect, Integrity and Flexibility into your ways of working.

You can find out more on Our Behaviours web page Our Behaviours – The City of Edinburgh Council

Our salary range typically reflects the initial starting salary and annually increases until it reaches the top of the range.

Happy to talk flexible working.

Follow us on Twitter at @edincounciljobs

View Housing Assistant Job Pack

Experience 

- Experience within a housing/homeless or similar service environment of comparable scope, size and complexity.  Essential
- Experience of working within a team and understanding of your role in effective teamwork. Essential
-Experience of, and ability to, develop effective relationships with colleagues, customers and partner organisations. Essential
-Experience of delivering or supporting front line services to deliver excellent customer services. Desirable
-Experience of supporting projects and understanding your contribution to effective team work. Desirable
-Experience of supporting operational strategy or service improvements Desirable

Knowledge, skills and understanding

-Analytical and research skills and the ability to interpret and communicate policy, legislation, regulation and data. Essential
-Knowledge of the homeless and legal legislative, regulatory and policy environment in which the service operates. Essential
-Good analytical skills, including verbal and numerical reasoning, and an ability to implement solutions to problems. Essential
-Good communication skills at a personal and operational level. Essential
-Relationship development and advisory skills. Essential
-Good verbal and numerical reasoning skills. Essential
-Ability to follow procedure and process and ensure compliance with the regulatory and policy environment in which your service operates.  Desirable
-Understanding of the commercial approach to service delivery.  Desirable

Qualifications and training

-Qualified to SVQ Level 2 Housing or equivalent evidence of experience. Essential
-Evidence of continuous professional development. Desirable