Welfare Rights Officer

Hurst Green; St. James's; On-site; GBP 24,000 - 30,000; Full time

Job summary

Dudley Council seeks an experienced Welfare Rights Officer on a fixed-term basis for 12 months to strengthen the Welfare Rights Team. The role focuses on providing specialist advice on welfare benefits and helping clients maximise income to prevent homelessness.

You will support with benefit applications, reconsiderations, appeals, and disability-related support, working with service users and frontline staff to secure housing stability and access to financial assistance.

Qualifications

• Housing and homelessness knowledge.
• Experience supporting vulnerable adults.

Responsibilities

• Prevent homelessness by working with partner agencies.
• Provide specialist advice and assistance to service users and frontline staff.
• Support with benefit applications, reconsiderations, appeals and disability-related benefits.
• Help customers navigate complex welfare systems to maximise income.
• Identify financial barriers to housing stability and prevent rent arrears.

Skills

Welfare rights knowledge

Housing/homelessness experience

Case management

Job description

The following content displays a map of the jobs location - 3-5 St James's Road, Dudley

Dudley Homelessness Prevention Service is seeking an experienced Welfare Rights Officer (fixed term for 12 months). This is an exciting opportunity to play a key role in the development of services and support officers to prevent homelessness.

The Homelessness Prevention & Response Team aim to prevent homelessness wherever possible so we offer advice and support about housing options to those that are homeless, those who may be at risk of losing their home, have other urgent housing needs, or who simply want to know more about the options that are available to them.

We are continuing to develop the Welfare Rights Team within the service, recognising the vital role it plays in preventing homelessness and supporting sustainable housing outcomes. The provision of welfare benefits advice, income maximisation support and financial guidance is a key preventative tool, helping customers to maintain their accommodation and reduce the risk of homelessness arising from financial hardship.

The purpose of the job is:

• To prevent homelessness working in partnership with other agencies
• Toprovide specialist advice and assistance to both service users and frontline staff
• To support with benefit applications, mandatory reconsiderations, appeals, disability-related benefits, and assistance accessing additional financial support schemes
• To help customers navigate often complex welfare systems and can significantly increase household income, improving housing stability.
• To identify financial barriers that may place individuals or families at risk of homelessness
• To provide earlyintervention through welfare rights support to help prevent rent arrears, tenancy breakdown, and the need for crisis interventions
• To support case manages in determining DMBC’s legal responsibility for homeless cases
• To manage a personal caseload, preventing homelessness whenever possible.
• To be an effective member of the Homelessness Prevention and Response Team, ensuring that high quality customer services are provided at all times, and that the service is continuously improving
• To be personally responsible for developing particular service areas and/or particular partnership initiatives

The post holder will need to have housing and homelessness knowledge, and experience of supporting vulnerable adults.

So that we can demonstrate Dudley’s commitment to diversity and inclusion and to improve bias in the recruitment process that could create barriers for candidates . Your personal data will be anonymised when you apply, to ensure that you comply with our anonymisation process, please ensure you have removed your name and date of birth from any attachments prior to uploading them to your application .

All applicants must be able to provide documentation to prove their right to work in the UK.

Please note: Dudley MBC does not currently offer sponsorship for candidates without the Right to Work in the UK.

Dudley Council will check the information that you have provided against any details already held for accuracy and completeness . The Council will check, share and cross match your information both internally within the council and with external organisations to protect public funds and prevent or detect crime, only where the law allows us to do so .

N.B. We reserve the right to close this vacancy prior to the advertised date should we receive a large number of applications