Housing and Health Link Worker

London Borough of Hounslow; Hounslow; On-site; GBP 34,000 - 42,000; Full time

Job summary

London Borough of Hounslow is recruiting for a frontline role in the Homelessness, Independence and Preventative Service. You will deliver a modern, preventative approach to housing, health and social care for some of the borough’s most vulnerable residents.

You will work with NHS partners to improve discharge planning, prevent homelessness, and provide holistic, casework-based support. The role requires campus-wide collaboration and a commitment to proactive, person-centred solutions.

Qualifications

• Experience with housing, health and social care needs.
• Ability to lead multi-disciplinary teams.
• Knowledge of homelessness legislation (Housing Act / Homelessness Reduction Act).
• Excellent communication and relationship-building skills.

Responsibilities

• Deliver frontline preventative housing services to vulnerable residents.
• Collaborate with NHS partners to support hospital discharges and prevent homelessness.
• Assess housing, health and care needs and provide practical interventions.
• Maintain on-site presence at hospital settings, typically two days a week, to support timely discharge.
• Promote access to preventative services and ensure timely service delivery.

Skills

Communication

Stakeholder engagement

Analytical thinking

Casework

Job description

About Us At Hounslow

We’d love you to join us at the London Borough of Hounslow! Our people are deeply committed to providing excellent services to our residents, doing all we can to make lives as good as they can be.

We are an outstanding council, serving an outstanding borough. With brilliant, visionary leadership, a dynamic Cabinet and a can-do culture, we’ve built strong partnerships which have transformed how we serve one of London’s most diverse boroughs. Hounslow is the world in one place and full of potential. We are stepping up for our residents like never before.

About Our Commitment To Diversity And Inclusion

We live by five core values: Lead with Heart, Do New, Pass on the Power, Harness the Mix and Be a Rock. All our work has equality, diversity and inclusion at its very heart, best articulated in “Harness the Mix”. It’s about breaking down barriers between our parts and people and unlocking the problem’solving power of our amazing mix of minds. We serve a diverse community, we have a diverse workforce and we are committed to being an inclusive employer.

We work hard to create representation across our workforce and leadership community, we have thriving employee network groups and our learning and development programmes help us lead, model and breathe ways of working that eliminate inequality, inequity, injustice and bias.

As part of this and under our commitments as a Disability Confident Employer, we make reasonable adjustments to accommodate our candidates. There’s space for you to tell us what you need within our application form.

About The Role

This is an exciting opportunity to join our Homelessness, Independence and Preventative Service which adopts a preventative approach across the housing, health and social care agendas. You will be a frontline professional delivering a first class, modern and flexible service to some of the most vulnerable people in the Borough.

About The Team You’ll Be Working In

This is an exciting and busy role that is at the centre of the Councils response to homelessness. The service is developing and progressing our agenda to reduce the use of temporary accommodation and achieve more upstream prevention outcomes.

• If you want to work in the public sector and be part of a progressive team, this is a unique opportunity for you as we are interested in what you can bring to help us improve and develop our services for our customers.
• You will contribute to the effective delivery of the integrated preventative service across housing, health and social care, providing a proactive, accessible, efficient and effective front-line service; promote access to preventative services, working proactively to ensure services are accessed in a timely way.
• You work proactively to prevent and resolve crisis and prevent the loss of accommodation while preventing the escalation of health care needs.
• You work collaboratively to facilitate discharges from health care settings, enable access to lower level preventative services and prevent repeat and avoidable admissions to acute health care services.
• This role forms part of the Council's integrated hospital discharge and homelessness prevention arrangements. The post holder will be expected to maintain a regular on-site presence at local hospital settings, ordinarily attending hospital sites at least two days per week, working closely with NHS partners to support timely hospital discharge, prevent homelessness and improve outcomes for residents.
• You adopt a casework-based approach to complete detailed holistic assessments of housing, health and social care needs, providing practical interventions and support.
• Maintain an ongoing knowledge and understanding of relevant legislation and the Council’s statutory duties in relation to housing, health and care needs, ensuring advice given is accurate at all times and provide tailored solutions to meet identified needs.

About You

You have extensive knowledge and experience of the Housing Act 1996 (as amended) and the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017, working with vulnerable people, and experience of leading multi-disciplinary housing teams and work involving complex needs and diverse client groups and an expert knowledge of homelessness and associated legislation.

• You have experience of multi-disciplinary working involving complex and diverse client groups and an understanding of complex legislative frameworks including homelessness, social care, mental health, immigration and welfare benefits.
• You are a great communicator to engage effectively with a broad range of people to influence, negotiate and persuade and you quickly build trusting relationships with complex individuals to develop a comprehensive understanding of issues faced by vulnerable people.
• You act with integrity, take personal responsibility and handle stress effectively while maintaining high levels of motivation and enthusiasm to achieve successful corporate preventative outcomes, using proactive and creative solutions.
• You work independently, proactively and flexibly, being an expert problem solver demonstrating excellent analytical skills, to seek out and implement bespoke solutions to complex issues and make decisions confidently.
• You are a high performing individual who works collaboratively with others, adapting to meet a range of changing needs while achieving targets and service objectives and make the team the very best it can be.
• You are confident to visit residents in their homes and other health care settings, and work from different locations in the Borough alongside other professionals. You are able to have challenging conversations with other professionals while maintaining a customer focus to achieve successful outcomes across housing, health and social care.

Essential For The Role

Basic DBS check is required for the role.