Housing First Enhanced Navigator (Cambridge)

Our benefits

We value our colleagues in Cambridgeshire County Council and have developed a number of benefits in addition to the basics like annual leave, sick pay, pension and mileage…

• A comprehensive wellbeing package to cover all aspects of wellbeing, both in and out of work, which can also be accessed by your family
• Buy up to 4 weeks additional annual leave (pro-rata) through our salary sacrifice scheme
• Take your bank holidays flexibly to better suit your personal circumstances
• Make Additional Voluntary Contributions (Shared AVCs) to your pension with tax and National Insurance savings
• Access to development opportunities, apprenticeships and qualified coaches to support your personal and professional growth
• Paid volunteering hours each year so you can make a positive impact on our community during your normal working day
• Access to Peer Support Groups through our IDEAL staff equality, diversity and inclusion network
• Opportunities to nominate and receive Employee Recognition Awards
• An Our Cambs Rewards account, giving you access to in-store and online discounts as well as our Car Lease and Cycle to Work schemes

About the role

Housing First is a housing and support approach which:

Gives people who have experienced homelessness and chronic health and social care needs a stable home from which to rebuild their lives.
Provides intensive, person-centred, holistic support that is open-ended.
Places no conditions on individuals; however, they should desire to have a tenancy.

Based on seven principles, Housing First helps to ensure that individuals have a right to a home, have the choice about where they live, and are supported to identify their strengths and goals.  

Housing First provision relies on staff being committed to the ethos, applying a proactive ‘can do, will do’ approach, that focuses on the long-term goal of supporting people to access and sustain tenancies and maximising connectivity with the local community.

The Cambridgeshire Housing First Project supports individuals facing multiple disadvantage across the county who have experienced long term homelessness and have been unsuccessful in navigating traditional homeless housing pathways. 

The team works with individuals from when they are rough sleeping all the way through to tenancy, helping them to reintegrate into society. Once in a tenancy, they continue to work with those individuals for as long as they need the level of support Housing First can offer. 

The team support individuals off the street and into independence through rapid intervention and support, as well as helping them to better manage any mental or physical health needs to avoid hospital admissions or the need for crisis interventions.

The team support individuals to maintain their tenancy, whilst encouraging them to get involved in their local community, supporting our vision of creating a fairer and more caring Cambridgeshire. This includes engaging residents in fun and meaningful activities to help build their skills, confidence and mental wellbeing, such as volunteering, fishing, pool, bowling and day trips out.

For more information about this opportunity please contact Vicky Knighton by email: Vicky.Knighton@Cambridgeshire.gov.uk. Part time applicants will be considered.

Appointment to this post will be subject to the outcome of an Enhanced Disclosure obtained through the Disclosure and Barring Service. The Council is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and vulnerable adults and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment. 

What will you be doing?

You will be responsible for coordinating and providing a flexible solution focused service, applying an assertive engagement and positive risk-taking approach, in line with the Housing First England principles, with a caseload of seven individuals across Cambridgeshire. 

You will be lone working and report to the Team Leader, but part of a supportive, experienced team. There is an expectation that you can travel across the county and at times be asked to support colleagues in other parts of the county. You will attend meetings and training both online and in person across the county.  

You will be working in an outreach and tenancy sustainment capacity to enable clients to access the services and interventions they need to build resilience, gain confidence, reduce harm and acquire the personal and social skills they need to move from the streets into accommodation and achieve their goals. 

What does a typical day look like? 

This is hard to say as no two days are the same! You will organise your own diary based on the needs of the individuals you are supporting. Usually you will plan to see several individuals in one day. Occasionally you will spend the whole day with one person, for example supporting them to court or to A&E. 

If you have just started working with them and they are rough sleeping then you will visit them on the street or meet them somewhere public, such as a café. Building up a trusted relationship with the people you work with is central to the role. 

Other aspects of the role include: 

• Support to get ID, such as a birth certificate. 
• Ensure they are getting the benefits they are entitled to. This might involve accompanying them to the benefits office. 
• Encourage and support to a medical appointment or to pick up medication. 
• Support to explore housing options. This may involve supporting them to make a homeless application or advocating on their behalf regarding a decision that has been made. 
• Support to use a computer to access their emails or their benefit journal. 
• Attend a professional's meeting if the person you are working with is being discussed. This is an opportunity to give their perspective and to strengthen relationships with partner agencies, such as Police, Probation, Public Heath, Housing and DWP. Sometimes the client may join the meeting with you. 
• Explore what it means to be a good neighbour and how to budget. Before they move into their home this is an important pre-tenancy stage. 
• Support to furnish a home once they have moved in and to set up utility payments.  
• Support to maintain the tenancy. This can include paying bills, cleaning, tidying and support to deal with any neighbour issues. 
• Encourage and support to take part in activities in the community, as well as visiting places of interest. 

Although this is a fixed term post, the hope is that it will continue after the 12 month period, subject to funding and an interim review. 

Further information can be found in the Job Description and Personal Specification attached. 

About us

Cambridgeshire is a great place to work and live with a diverse population, an urban centre in Cambridge, historic Isle of Ely, Huntingdon and St Ives as well as more rural landscapes.

Our four values are central to our culture, driving everything we do.

We are proud to serve the diverse communities of Cambridgeshire and want our workforce to be reflective of this diversity, which we firmly believe benefits our colleagues, the organisation and our communities. If you don’t meet every single requirement in the job role but think this could be you, please don’t be put off.   We are committed to building a workplace that is compassionate and inclusive as well as diverse, so if you think you could be a good candidate for this role please consider applying and speak to the recruiting manager if you have any questions.

Our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy, along with our employee network 'IDEAL' and self-organised peer support groups help us to foster an inclusive, supportive and safe working environment where people feel valued, respected, and empowered.  We collect relevant diversity data for monitoring as part of the recruitment process to understand the diversity of our applicants and monitor any trends throughout the recruitment processes so that we can take meaningful action.

We are proud to be a Disability Confident Employer. We fully support providing reasonable adjustments throughout our recruitment process, as well as when you join us, and we encourage candidates to contact the Hiring Manager, whose details can be found in the advert, to discuss any adjustment needs. Some examples of adjustments could include additional time to complete an assessment or printing a document on pastel coloured paper with larger font size and line spacing. We would value talking about what might be possible to enable you to join us and thrive, so if there is something that would help you to do your best during your journey with us, please get in touch.

Visit our jobs and careers section to find out more about our wide range of learning and development opportunities; apprenticeships; our wellbeing package; staff benefits; our commitment to equality, diversity and Inclusion. 

https://www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk/council/jobs-and-careers