Youth Engagement Officer

We're looking for

A customer-focused individual with energy, experience and a strong sense of purpose to join us as a Support Worker.

Catalyst is all about homes people love. That means everything from developing and maintaining great properties, to delivering excellent service to our customers, every day. We provide housing for those who can’t afford a home without our help, and offer a wide range of homes for rent, shared ownership or purchase. In doing so, we build more than homes – we build communities.

We’re one of the UK’s leading housing associations, and a member of the G15 group. We're at a particularly exciting point in our story, having recently merged with another large housing association, Aldwyck. The merger makes us stronger and more able to deliver our social purpose - in every part of our organisation.

We’re a Sunday Times top 100 Best Company to Work for. We invest care, time and resources in our people because we know it’s our people who will drive our purpose. If you’d like to be part of what we do, please get in touch.

The role

As a Support Worker you will play an active role in delivering our support service to young people. You’ll primarily be working with young people aged 16 to 25 in Hertford, preparing to live independently once they leave the project.

You’ll work closely with your Senior Project Worker and a range of external agencies in engaging young people in their support programme and achieving their goals. In addition to this, you’ll be planning and delivering fun and meaningful activities for young people living at the project, whilst adhering to safeguarding and health and safety procedures. You’ll need to help keep the project clean and tidy, and closely monitor rent accounts and follow the projects arrears procedure.

Key requirements

You may have some experience of working in a similar role, however if you have a passion or desire to work with vulnerable and complex young people then we’d still love to hear from you. You’ll need good IT skills and the ability to manage a complex caseload. People skills are an absolute must for this position, so you need to be a strong communicator. Due to the nature of the role, a discreet and sensitive approach with strong professional boundaries is also required. You’ll need to be able to commit to working overnight and unsociable hours on a rota basis, and so will need to be able to confidently deal with tense and difficult situations. An understanding of safeguarding and knowledge of the benefit system would be useful, but not essential. Please note this role will be subject to an enhanced DBS check.