Staff Support

**Job Title - **Staff Support (NHS) Welfare Rights and Housing Adviser

**Department - **Support Hub

**Reports to - **Welfare Rights Supervisor

**Hours of Work - **Part Time, Three days a week (22.5 hours). Hybrid working for the foreseeable future with regular attendance to the office at least 1-2 days a week across our locations in north London: Pears Building, Royal Free Hospital, Barnet Hospital and Chase Farm Hospital.

**Salary - £30,000 - £32,455** **per annum, pro-rata**

**Contract - **Fixed term (18 months)

**The Royal Free Charity**

**Our vision**

**The Royal Free Charity**

**Our vision**

Our vision is for everyone served by the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust (RFL) to have access to world-leading healthcare, delivered by a thriving workforce, and driven by medical research that has a global impact. We support the 10,000 staff of the RFL and their 1.6 million patients across Barnet, Chase Farm and Royal Free hospitals and more than 30 NHS services.

**What we do**

Through the services we provide, and the programmes and equipment we fund, we make a profound and immediate difference to patients’ experiences of care. Our volunteering, support hub, and complementary therapy teams enhance the hospital journey for all patients - whether they live locally, or come from further away to access the trust’s specialist services. Our support of the RFL workforce enables staff to perform at their very best. Spanning individual professional development and training through to organisation-wide interventions, our initiatives bolster employee resilience and mental health so staff can achieve the best outcomes for patients. We fund ground-breaking research with the potential to change people’s lives, whether it’s through our small grants programme or delivering major capital funding appeals.

**Our approach**

We are a solution-focused strategic partner to the RFL, helping our hospitals to go further and faster than the NHS could do alone. We believe funding decisions should be made based on strategic priority and impact, with a strong focus on co-production.

The Royal Free Charity (the Charity) invests in:

- Enhanced support for patients
- Vital support for our staff
- Ground-breaking research and innovation
- Cutting-edge medical equipment

**The generosity of our donors, fundraisers and volunteers enables us to do this.**

The Charity, which employs about 80 people, is working towards becoming an employer of choice.

**Support Hub Team**

The support hub department is here to support people affected by long term health conditions (patients and carers), to help them with the practicalities of living with a chronic condition; to improve wellbeing and quality of life. We are here to transform patient experience and staff experience and change lives for the better.

We aim to play our part in addressing inequalities in health, through supporting with the wider determinants of health (e.g., finances, housing); areas which can have a direct impact on someone’s health outcomes and recovery.

We are here for Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust staff through the support we provide for their patients, stepping in where they may not have the time or expertise.

In addition to our core service, we are excited to be expanding our service into supporting NHS staff, following a successful pilot. Your role will be dedicated to this service. Through helping staff, we believe staff will be better able to perform in their roles; improving staff experience and patient care.

**Principal accountabilities / responsibilities: -**

**Housing and welfare benefits casework**
- To provide housing and welfare rights advice for staff members of the Royal Free London (RFL) NHS Foundation Trust.
- To work a minimum of 1 day per week on site; rotating across our sites including the Royal Free, Barnet, and Chase Farm Hospitals.
- To provide advice and support on welfare benefits and housing matters (that do not require a solicitor).
- To check whether clients are in receipt of all the benefits they are entitled to and help them claim relevant benefits.
- To help clients understand benefit decisions and challenge them (where appropriate) by way of mandatory reconsiderations and appeals.
- To help clients ensure they keep to their responsibilities in respect of their benefit claims, for example by notifying any relevant changes of circumstances.
- To engage effectively with case work supervision, including by keeping accurate, up-to-date records on the case management system, ‘Advice Pro’, following the case management processes and keeping to the ‘terms of engagement’ we send to clients.
- To provide a combination of face-to-face and telephone appointments, and drop-in sessions, dependent on the service needs.
- To refer or signpost clients to other agencies or departments as appropriate, e.g., housing solicitors; community care cases involving social services and NHS duties, FCA-regulated debt and immigr