Women's Accommodation Criminal Justice Key Worker

**APPLICATIONS WITHOUT A COVER LETTER WILL NOT BE CONSIDERED**

**Women’s Accommodation Criminal Justice Key Worker**

**Salary**: £28,266 (per annum)

**Location**: Leeds

**Hours**: 37 hours full-time

In our gender-specific Centres, we provide holistic support to women by women, to overcome challenges and address needs. We help women build upon their strengths and work through any barriers that are preventing them from progressing and achieving their potential.

The Women’s Accommodation Criminal Justice Key Worker will engage with and provide intensive support to women on Probation and will be particularly required to support women with overcoming issues around their:

- Personal Wellbeing
- Mental Health
- Accommodation
- Finance, Benefits and Debts
- Employment, Training and Education
- Family and Significant Others
- Lifestyle and Associates
- Social Inclusion
- Dependency and Recovery

This role will be part of the Women’s Criminal Justice Team, delivering an inclusive and supportive programme driven to achieve the best for local communities. The particular focus of this role will be to support women through the Accommodation pathway across West Yorkshire. We manage centres in Leeds, Bradford, Wakefield, Huddersfield, Halifax and HMP Newhall.

You will work closely with external organisations, across West Yorkshire, to extend access to support services and secure safe and affordable long-term accommodation. You will also work to encourage women to access existing resources, as well as working to build new opportunities. You will support women to build upon their strengths and work through any barriers that are preventing them from progressing and achieving their potential.

This role requires agile working, which will include being office based, delivering within the community and working from our multiple locations, therefore you will need to be able to work effectively independently, and as a dispersed team member, under pressure to meet challenging deadlines. You may also be required to provide in-reach support to women in custody.

**Key Accountabilities**
- Responsible for a caseload of women, to whom you will provide high quality customer support via the following:

- Assist women in identifying their own needs and supporting them to progress using a strength based and trauma informed approach to reduce the likelihood of further offending.
- Provide flexible, pro-active outreach support to vulnerable women who may be reluctant to engage with services or who need additional support to comply with Court/Prison Licence requirements, reducing the likelihood of breach or recall to custody.
- Accompany women to appointments in the community, acting as advocate as required.
- Facilitation and delivery of therapeutic group-work activities to women.
- Work with other practitioners within the Partnership to review and monitor women’s
- progress against agreed support plans.
- Determine the nature and extent of treatment and support that is appropriate to develop
- social capital and rehabilitation for women.
- Promote the programme using branded literature and materials throughout the community
- Contribute to the Development of a cohort of peers who can support learners.
- Establish community focus and development approaches to ensure that all women
- accessing the service have effective sustainable support networks in place.
- Identify and support access to community resources to support women in the successful
- exit from the programme.
- Working within and alongside an integrated model of care involving Health, Criminal Justice
- System and Social Care professionals.
- Safeguarding vulnerable women from self-neglect, abuse and harm by acting in
- accordance to Together Women’s Safeguarding Policies and Government Legislation
- Encouraging feedback from women using the service in order to promote quality assurance.
- Contribute to measuring and monitoring systems as required.
- Ensure all necessary records are properly maintained in line with policies on client files,
- finance and administration.
- Use evaluation, learning, experience and use feedback to support service development.
- Manage and update own skills base to ensure quality service delivery and personal
- development in role

**Additional Accountabilities**
- The post holder is to fulfil additional accountabilities specific to the accommodation specialism.
- Assess women’s accommodation needs and support them to obtain and maintain secure, appropriate and safe accommodation in agreement with their offender manager, considering risk, restrictions and vulnerabilities.
- Work with housing providers, including the Private Rented Sector, local authority Gateways and Supported Housing to secure accommodation or safeguard existing accommodation through continuous support to sustain tenancies.
- Lead on the development of services for women to access support to improve their housing situations, across the West Yorkshire Criminal Justice Team, en