Visiting Advocate – West Midlands (including Staffordshire, Worcestershire & Shropshire)

Information to candidates

Who we are looking for

We are seeking a children’s rights champion who is committed to our purpose, vision and values. We want someone who can provide weekly Visiting Advocacy services at a small number of children’s homes and mental health units in Worcestershire (Clent), Staffordshire(Stoke-on-Trent), Shropshire (Shifnal and surrounding areas) plus Chester when required.

Our Visiting Advocate will be working with children with complex needs and mental health issues. You will be comfortable working in a specialist residential settings. You will be delivering instructed, partially instructed and non-instructed advocacy and passionate about giving voice to the wishes and feelings of the children they work with. You will enjoy meeting and working with children and will be proactive in taking forward their issue during and following your visits.

Coram Voice particularly welcomes applications from care leavers or individuals with experience of being ‘looked after’ by the state. We are also actively encouraging applicants from Asian, African, Caribbean and other minority ethnic backgrounds to join our teams. Whilst we have a diverse team we recognise we are a predominantly white workforce and are genuinely committed to encouraging candidates from diverse communities in order to improve the services to the children and young people we help.

Our Core Purpose

Coram Voice exists to enable children and young people to actively participate in shaping their own lives and to hold to account the services that are responsible for their care.

We serve children and young people who are vulnerable to harm or exclusion from society, and who rely on the state or its agencies for their rights and wellbeing.

Our Vision

Coram Voice strives for a society which recognises and willingly accepts its responsibilities to children and young people; where the inequalities and discrimination they currently face have been eradicated; were those children and young people are fully engaged in all decisions that are made about their lives; and where the views, needs and feelings that they express are at the core of those decisions.

Our Values

  • We are child and young person driven, always asking what children and young people want us to do. By engaging them at all levels of our work, their views and experiences are central to shaping all our plans. We are tenacious and passionate champions of children’s rights and we will not be distracted in our determination to do the right thing for children and young people.
  • Second only to our dedication to children is our dedication to each other. Our work is defined and inspired by meaningful, supportive, mutually empowering relationships with and between children and young people, colleagues and partners. These relationships are powerful because they are authentic and human, where every contribution is equally valued and respected.
  • We create a friendly and supportive working environment where work can and should be fun. We recognise that happy people perform at their best, and that people performing at their best are happier in their work. We celebrate our successes together and are open about our concerns and mistakes, supporting each other to grow and learn from them. We work flexibly, supporting each other in times of high workload or when life gets difficult.
  • We accept personal responsibility for our work and we are accountable for delivering results against those responsibilities. Managers empower their people to take ownership of and make decisions on their areas of responsibility, ensuring that workload is manageable, that people are treated fairly, that they are supported and challenged to succeed. Everyone at Coram Voice is committed to modelling and championing these values, and managers have a particular responsibility for bringing them to life.

Our Work

Coram Voice is the leading specialist provider of advocacy and children’s rights services for children and young people in and on the edge of care. We support some of the most vulnerable children and young people in society, giving voice to the voiceless and reaching out to those who have missed out on the support they need. Join us as we work to transform the lives of children and young people by supporting them to uphold their rights of to actively participate in shaping their lives.

Coram Voice was established in 1975 and in 2013 joined the Coram group of charities which develops, delivers and promotes best practice in the support of children and young people. Coram’s vision is that every child has the best possible chance in life.

We have around 60 employed staff, 100 self-employed advocates and independent persons, and 70 volunteers deliver services to children and agencies throughout the country. Together they provide Coram Voice with a high degree of specialist expertise in the fields of advocacy, children’s rights, mental health, complaints, secure accommodation and experience of working with children in care, in custody, in need and those who have recently left care.

Coram Voice provides a range of services across the country:

  • Advocacy services direct to children and young people in care, in need, leaving care, involved in child protection processes, and children and young people with severe and complex mental health problems. Advocates around the country support children and young people to get their voice heard in decisions about their lives. This may be through an advocate working directly with a child, for instance, to support them at a review meeting, or providing outreach advocacy and advice in a homeless centre. Coram Voice also provides visiting advocacy services to Secure Units, Secure Training Centres, psychiatric hospitals, residential special schools and children’s homes across the country. Our Specialist advocates drive our excellence in support children and young people with disabilities, care leavers, and homeless young people.
  • Our national Always Heard service providing helpline and an advocacy safety net service for children and young people who cannot find this locally.
  • Independent visitors services providing volunteer befrienders to children and young people in care. Our IVs are reliable, consistent and independent friends who are matched with a looked after children who is isolated, and has limited, or no, family contact. They provide a good, stable, adult role model for the young person, befriending and listening to the young person, on an open-ended basis for as long as both parties want it to continue.
  • Independent Mental Health Advocacy (IMHA) to advocate for young people as qualifying patients under the Mental Health Act, in order to fully support them to get their views heard in matters relating to their mental health.
  • Independent people for Return Home Interviews providing independent people to safeguard and support children who have run away from home, and where needed advocate on their behalf.
  • Appropriate Adult for Age Assessments providing independent people to act as appropriate adults who will support children in their age assessment interviews and ensure their rights are upheld.
  • Participation services to ensure children and young people have a voice in the development and delivery of services and campaigns, and through the process, provide the opportunity to develop relevant skills which will be of benefit to them in their future lives.
  • Independent services: Coram Voice is a major national provider of independent person services for complaints by children and for reviewing whether children should be locked up in secure units on welfare grounds.
  • The Bright Spots programme: A program which aims to improve the well-being of children in care by identifying and promoting practises that have a positive influence on children and young people's well-being. Coram Voice is working with local authorities across the country to support them to work with children to improve service delivery.
  • Policy and campaigning tocreate a better system for all children and young people looked after by the state, for their care to be more child-centred and to give young people a greater say in decisions about their lives.
  • Training, development and information for young people, advocates and child care workers, offering courses in advocacy, children’s rights and child-centred practice across a range of areas including the new National Advocacy Qualification.

Information about Coram Voice Visiting Advocacy

Coram Voice provides regular visiting advocacy services to young people in a range of residential settings. Visiting Advocacy supports and empowers young people to have a say in the decisions made about their lives and their experience of living within a secure environment. Advocates aim to empower and inform young people to enable them to understand their rights, and make informed choices in decisions affecting their lives.

As a child centered service, and acting on the young person’s issues (excepting matters regarding child protection and safety) sometimes, advocates may represent a young person’s wishes and feelings which are in conflict with what the Local Authority (for example) may deem to be in that child’s best interests.

The issues raised by young people are varied and have included a range of issues regarding: quality of care, care planning, move on placement decisions, making complaints and requests for support and representation at meetings and reviews.

The advocate provides information about the service to the unit and promotes the service to young people, staff and parents/carers.

General considerations

  • Please note that people employed by a local authority cannot work for Coram Voice in the same authority.
  • All posts are subjected to an Enhanced Disclosure & Barring Service check and successful candidates will not be able to work unsupervised with children or young people until the completion of this process.
  • All Coram Voice workers are required to comply with Coram Voice Codes of Practice and Code of Ethics.
  • Annual leave entitlement: 25 days per year, rising by a day for every completed year’s service to 28 days after 3 years, plus an additional 3 days paid leave between Christmas and New Year when the offices are closed pro rata.
  • Pension: Coram Voice offers a matched contribution to a Group Stakeholder Pension Plan of between 3% - 5% of salary.
  • An interest-free season ticket loan is available to all staff.
  • Employees Assisted Programme: access to BUPA helpline and counselling service.
  • Staff can access tax and national insurance free bicycles through a Cycle to Work Scheme

Returning your application

  • We cannot accept general CVs. When completing your application form, you need to address each point of the person specification and demonstrate how you meet it.
  • Applications must be fully completed. Additional sheets or information should be sent as an attachment in the same email as your application form. Applications must be received by 9am on the closing date.
  • If you are a current Coram Voice employee you may submit a supporting statement only addressing the person specification requirements for the post.

Please return your application to:

Closing date for applications: 31st October 2017

Interviews: 7th November 2017

Warner Interviews: TBC

Please note that the interview dates above are fixed and we may not be able to offer you an alternative date if you are unable to attend on the date given.

The recruitment process:

  • Shortlisting will be undertaken by the Coram Voice managers
  • Successful candidates will then be invited for interview
  • The interview process will comprise of a written exercise and a panel interview.