Female Involvement Coordinator – Women’s Centred Services

£23,239 pa (pro rata, 6-8 month fixed term contract dependent on hours worked) + excellent benefits including flexible hours (22.5-37.5 hrs pw)

Bristol, Birmingham or Sheffield or Home Working considered

Closing date: 27th October 2020 at 11.30pm. Interview date: 4 November 2020.

Do you have experience of planning and delivering involvement, volunteering or research activities and liaising with external agencies, partners and professionals, possibly in a housing or homelessness context? Then join Shelter as an Involvement Coordinator and you could soon be playing an exciting and diverse role within a new project aimed at developing our approach to women's centred services.

A home is a fundamental human need, as essential as education or healthcare. Yet millions of people across Britain struggle on a daily basis with homelessness, bad housing conditions, soaring rents, discrimination and the threat of eviction. So, we are striving for change with individuals, in communities, across society and leading the way to a safe home. We need ambitious, best-in-class individuals who are passionate about our cause to join us at this exciting time. This is your chance to play a part in the fundamental change we are striving to achieve.

Women are being increasingly and disproportionately impacted by the housing crisis. This has led Shelter to develop a new strategic priority to ensure that all our housing advice services are designed with a clear understanding of how a women's gender affects their housing problems and the kind of support they need as a result. We're spearheading this transformation by developing services in three locations, which are designed by women with lived experience and local partner agencies, and directed at helping homeless and poorly housed women. We have secured National Lottery funding, initially for 6 months, to carry out this work.

About the Role
Under the direction of a Project Manager, you'll be responsible for recruiting Peer Research Volunteers with lived experience and training and supporting them to conduct research in their local communities. Research will involve talking to women about local need and barriers to accessing support, with the aim of designing services to help them. This will involve engaging, supporting and developing people involved, to actively engage them in the project and ensure that the project is coproduced. The work will be carried out in three key locations and your challenge will be to represent the voices of people with lived experience in service design discussions and see that the language used in documentation and proposals is appropriate to the issues women face. Along the way, you'll also work with a variety of stakeholders to support and encourage involvement through various means and make sure opportunities are available for all to be involved.

About you
Personal experience of homelessness or poor housing and an understanding of how these issues have affected you would be an advantage. You’ll need to be dynamic and have experience of working with people who have direct experience of homelessness or poor housing, or similar issues. You'll also need a proven ability to use different methods to encourage participation and help those involved meet their potential. Adept at networking and information gathering, you have the excellent all-round communication and interpersonal skills it takes to work closely with an Involvement Team and other internal stakeholders. And, because your workload will be varied and demanding, you'll need excellent skills in prioritising, organising and boundary setting and a willingness to travel regularly between Sheffield, Bristol and Birmingham to get the job done.

Due to the specific requirements of the role we are only considering applications from women for this role. The Equality Act 2010, Schedule 9, Part 1, Paragraph 1 applies to this post.

Benefits
We offer a wide range of benefits, including 30 days of annual leave (pro rata), enhanced family friendly policies, pension and interest free travel loans. Our employees also have access to a tenancy deposit loan, payroll giving, cycle to work scheme and an employee assistance programme.

Shelter helps millions of people every year struggling with bad housing or homelessness through our advice, support and legal services. And we campaign to make sure that, one day, no one will have to turn to us for help. We're here so no one has to fight bad housing or homelessness on their own.

To find out more about the role and the benefits of working for Shelter please visit our website. Apply to be part of our Women's Centred Services team and be the change you want to see in society.

Safeguarding is everyone's business. Shelter is committed to protecting the health, wellbeing and human rights of those we support, and enabling them to live free from harm, abuse and neglect. All our staff will be expected to observe professional standards of behaviour and conduct their work in line with our Safeguarding Policies.

Shelter promotes equality, diversity and inclusion in our workplace. We make employment decisions by matching business needs with skills and experience of candidates, irrespective of age, disability (including hidden disabilities),gender, gender identity or gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, or sexual orientation. We also encourage applications from people, who have been homeless or have been at risk of homelessness. We are facing diverse problems, so need diverse people to tackle them.

We are happy to talk about flexible working, personal growth, and to promote a workplace where you can be yourself and achieve success based only on your merit.

Shelter does not accept unsolicited CVs from external recruitment agencies nor accept the fees associated with them.