Welfare Rights Officer

We are looking for enthusiastic, motivated and team-oriented individual to work within the Kinship Support Service, a team established in October 2022, supporting children and families living within kinship arrangements.

As part of this busy social care team, you will support families in both kinship and adoptive arrangements (linking with our partner agency Adoption East Midlands) to ensure they are in receipt of the correct benefits, providing welfare rights information and guidance and advocating on their behalf with partner agencies such as housing and utility companies. You will be involved in financial assessments of families to ensure any funding provided by the local authority (kinship or adoption allowances) is appropriate and fair and in line with current legislation/Nottinghamshire policy. You will form part of a wider team of social workers, family workers and administrative support.

You will need a good working knowledge of the benefits system and an ability to advocate on behalf of families where a discrepancy in welfare support has been identified. You will need strong mathematical skills to ensure you’re your financial assessments are accurate. Where there is any deficit in this knowledge base you will need to be willing to learn systems and shadow other welfare rights officers in the team to build your knowledge base.

You will also need to be organised, have good time management skills, be able to work towards and meet deadlines and be able to build up excellent interpersonal relationships with colleagues and families alike. The role will involve both visiting families in the home, attending multiagency meetings in person and online and speaking to professionals and families via numerous forms of communication.  

You will need to have good listening skills and recording skills to ensure information is accurately recorded onto our internal database system (Mosaic).  You will also need to be comfortable working as part of a team and  independently and using your initiative and planning your diary to meet service need. This role calls for hybrid working, so you will be expected to attend offices and also work at home as required. The post will also require visits to families’ home’s therefore a driving license and use of a vehicle is essential (unless disability precludes this).

This is a part-time post (18.5 hours) with working days being negotiable.  The office base is Trent Bridge House in West Bridgford, though hybrid working both at home and other office bases is also supported.

For an informal chat please contact Lucy Collier, team manager, on 0115 804 1070 or at lucy1.collier@nottscc.gov.uk or on 0115 804 1407 or kinshipsupport@nottscc.gov.uk

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