Young People's Worker

Young People's Worker: Minding the Gap

Contract: Permanent

Hours: 35 pw. Flexible working hours required - at least one day a month Saturday working.

Location: The Hive, Catch22, 18 Harben Parade, Finchley Road, London NW3 6JP

Closing date: 28 March 2023

Main duties of the job

This is an exciting opportunity to be part of a highly innovative project delivering and providing an integrated holistic health and wellbeing support service for 16-24 year olds within the borough of Camden. You will be working as part of a team to make a real difference to young people. Using the benefit of your own experience as well as expert training you will provide health and wellbeing support to ensure young people can access all of the services they need as they transition to adulthood.

Once you have read the ad fully, to apply, please use this link provided below which will take you straight through the NHSJobs link where your application will be picked up immediately.

https://beta.jobs.nhs.uk/candidate/jobadvert/B0129-23-3951

About us

The principal objective of Brandon Centre is to provide a professional, accessible, and flexible service, which responds to the psychological, medical, sexual and social needs of young people under 25 years and their families.

The services we provide are:

Mental Health and Wellbeing Services including individual Counselling & Psychotherapy for young people, Systemic Integrative Treatment for families using a range of evidence-based therapies and therapeutic work and a variety of innovative outreach projects in community settings. Clinical Training and Consultancy including healthy living, parent programmes and other group work.

Job responsibilities

The Hive is part of The Minding the Gap programme, a cross-cutting support service aimed at 16-24 year olds in Camden needing support transitioning between children's and adult mental health services. The Hive is delivered by a unique partnership between leading local providers in Camden and young people - set up to create an integrated, holistic provision for 16-24 year olds. The Hive is commissioned by Camden Council and the Camden NHS Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) from Catch 22, working with the Brandon Centre, the Anna Freud Centre, Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust, The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, The Winch and The Integrate Movement.

As a Young People’s Worker, you'll need to be able to gain and build trusting relationships with a diverse range of young people so that they feel able to talk to you about the different problems they face. You'll be trained and supported to apply non-formalised therapeutic techniques from a range of therapeutic backgrounds to meet the needs of the young people you work with. You'll be able to identify and refer young people with more complex mental health needs to appropriate agencies. You'll support young people to access a broad range of in-house and local services. You will take personal responsibility to ensure different service providers are working together so that nothing falls through the gaps for the young people you are working with, and that they experience integrated support. This will involve creating strong partnerships with local services via community orientation and outreach work to support young people in services they are already accessing.

You'll carry out assessments with young people in order to set goals and create holistic care plans to meet their needs. You'll not be seeking to create a permanent mentor relationship and will work with young people to ensure that they can live their lives more independently of services or to ensure they are linked with other appropriate organisations to meet their needs. A significant proportion of the service operates an outreach model of delivery, in the community, as preferred by the young person. The outreach work particularly targets vulnerable young people who may not readily engage with services.

You'll support the Hub Manager to plan, advertise and carry out activities in The Hive our social hub. Also support and engage in the group work element of The Hive, engaging with young people on the social hub and carrying out health and wellbeing activities. The young people supported through this project will often be vulnerable and challenging, and workers need to be resilient, skilled, and flexible to ensure that we deliver a consistently high-quality service.

To be considered you will be:

• Open to flexible delivery & able to adapt to change with a positive approach to work
• Prepared to work flexible working hours including some evening/weekend work
• Committed to valuing diversity & implementing equal opportunities & anti- discriminatory practice
• Passionate for achieving positive outcomes for young people.

Essential experience:

• Knowledge and awareness of the types of issues that affect young people;
• Knowledge of good practice in emotional wellbeing & mental health delivery for 16-25 year olds & understanding of key issues concerning service delivery for this group.

Desirable

• Knowledge & understanding of the issues facing socially excluded young people or those at risk of disengaging from mainstream activities and services
• Knowledge of relevant legislation, policy and good practice relating to young people.

Essential skills

• High end interpersonal and communication skills and the ability to build and sustain relationships with service users who may present complex and sometimes challenging behaviours
• Ability to engage a variety of stakeholders including young people, parents, professionals and other members of the community effectively
• Ability to identify and assess potential risks that may arise for young people and an ability to work creatively and as part of a team to reduce these risks
• Good verbal and written communication skills
• Ability to set goals collaboratively with young people and support them in working towards achieving these goals
• Ability to handle sensitive and confidential issues with tact and diplomacy, whilst maintaining boundaries
• Good IT skills and ability to organise own work routines effectively and to work on own initiative to an agreed action plan
• A commitment to valuing diversity and implementing equal opportunities and anti-discriminatory practice
• Ability to work flexibly and collaboratively within a team setting.

Desirable

• Ability to work alongside staff from a range of different agencies e.g. Youth Services, Social Care; Substance Misuse; NHS or Mental Health;
• An understanding of the risks entailed in service delivery to vulnerable young people and risk management processes.

Essential qualifications

• NVQ Level 2 in an area related to working with young people from underprivileged backgrounds or a BA or BSc degree preferably, but not necessarily, in a social studies subject e.g. sociology, social administration, psychology, or a teaching, youth work, nursing, substance misuse worker qualification, social work or other training relevant for working with vulnerable young people, including training by experience.
• Working with young people in youth-based support settings;
• Providing one to one support to young people
• Working in partnership, in multi-disciplinary teams
• Delivering activities within a youth base/support setting using creative ways to consistently engage young people.

Desirable

• Relevant qualification in youth, social or community work or a related field
• Experience of outreach or detached work
• Experience of co-production of services with young people
• Experience of community mental health delivery.

Job Types: Full-time, Permanent

Salary: £27,000.00 per year

Benefits:

• Company pension
• Sick pay

Schedule:

• Monday to Friday
• Weekend availability

Ability to commute/relocate:

• London, NW3: reliably commute or plan to relocate before starting work (required)

Education:

• A-Level or equivalent (preferred)

Experience:

• mental health: 2 years (required)
• young (vulnerable) people work: 2 years (required)

Licence/Certification:

• NVQ Level 2 in related background (required)

Work authorisation:

• United Kingdom (required)

Work Location: One location

Application deadline: 28/03/2023