Caseworker (Temporary Accommodation)(C)

Job Description

Job Category : Housing, Benefits & Planning
Location : Southover House, Lewes and Eastbourne Councils
Hours Per Week : 37.00
Start Date: Immediate start
Start Time : 09:00
End Time : 17:00
Salary: £10.42
Caseworker required to assist the very busy Accommodation Team at Lewes & Eastbourne Councils. This role requires the post holder to support a Senior Caseworker with the day to day running of the service. This includes the placement of homeless clients into Emergency or Temporary Accommodation, completing Housing Benefit applications and placement paperwork. This role also requires substantial administration experience to help manage and keep records up to date.

This role is predominantly working from home but the ability to attend the occasional day in Newhaven or Eastbourne offices is required.

Key skills and attributes –
Ability to manage various priorities.
Strength in administration and note keeping.
Knowledge of homelessness legislation (a general understanding).
Able to collect IT equipment from Eastbourne Office.

Key Tasks
1. Casework or supporting leads in partner agencies on a range of homelessness, housing
options, allocations and rough sleeping cases, assessing the risk and vulnerability of
customers and considering all aspects of the customer’s situation in order to provide the
best avenue of support.4
2. Assist in the design and development of tools and guidance notes for Housing Needs and
Standards area to enable the team to self-serve and widen their knowledge.
3. To promote, create and implement best use of available social media channels to help
increase awareness of the councils’ presence in the community.
4. Access and accurately update all relevant information systems, both customer and back
office ensuring that the Golden Customer Record is updated and maintained through
verification and validation, and in accordance with Data Protection principles.
5. Actively develop and maintain a working knowledge of Lewes and Eastbourne Council’s
services, processes and procedures.
Corporate Accountabilities
1. To promote equality of opportunity in service delivery in line with strategic commitment and
corporate policies.
2. To promote a culture that is supportive of the Councils’ purpose, aims and values, and to
take all reasonable steps to maintain good employee relations
3. Staff are encouraged to participate fully in promoting a safety culture to protect the safety
and health of themselves, colleagues and other people affected by the Council’s activities
4. To understand and apply the council’s Data Protection and Data Quality policy and
procedures
5. Any other duties commensurate with the nature of the post.
6. You will be required to support Eastbourne Borough and Lewes District Councils’
corporate priorities and to ensure business continuity eg emergency response, elections,
deployment to critical services.
7. To work within the councils’ Core Competencies Framework. Central to the delivery of the
role are the values and behaviours set out below. These are shared by all employees and
applied to everything we do. The bullet points for each competency are examples of
performance required:

QUALIFICATIONS

Essential
• Good standard of general education
including GCSE at grade C or above
(or equivalent) in English and Maths,
or qualified by strong relevant
experience.
Desirable
• Institute of Customer Services (or
equivalent).

TRAINING
Essential
• Commitment to undertake continuing
professional development.
• Commitment to undertake a
Customer Services qualification.
• Equalities.
• Willingness to undertake relevant
training.
Desirable
• Customer Service.
• Health and Safety.

SKILLS & ABILITIES

Essential

• Able to communicate effectively, (face
to face, written and telephone) with
customers, colleagues, council
officers and external agencies.
• Ability to deal with challenging,
vulnerable and distressed customers
and difficult situations.
• Ability to actively listen in order to
extract and assess important
information to ensure that the
appropriate arrangements are made
to support the customer’s needs.
• Ability to work calmly and sensitively.
• To be confident, flexible and the
ability to work on own initiative.
• Customer focused.
• Ability to use IT systems to gather,
store and process information.
• Ability to work, support and deliver
services within the Councils
Comprehensive Equalities Policy.

Desirable
• Able to exploit the use of new
technology.
• Able to work with teams across an
organisation to improve services.