Advocate (Community)

Job description

Salary:£23,497 per annum pro rata

Responsible to:Children’s Services Manager, or other designated supervisor

Hours:35 hours per week

All Coram Voice staff are expected to work in line with our brand, values and management principles, in particular by:

  • Building and maintaining meaningful, supportive, mutually empowering relationships with and between colleagues, partners, and children and young people.
  • Creating and supporting a friendly and trusting working environment, working flexibly and supporting each other in times of high workload or when life gets difficult.
  • Accepting personal responsibility for our work and being accountable for delivering results against those responsibilities.
  • Recognising that we all have a role to play in all aspects of Coram Voice’s success, in particular in supporting fundraising, storytelling, and involving children and young people in shaping the future of Coram Voice.

Main focus for the post:

This post will be part of our Children’s Rights Services team based in London and will focus predominantly on our advocacy work in Waltham Forest.

This will be to provide advocacy support to children in need, looked after and care leavers, and children subject to the Child Protection process.

Key Responsibilities:

  1. Provide advocacy support to children and young people:
  • Undertake advocacy casework, in line with Coram Voice practice guidelines, with young people allocatedfor issues based support,support in the Child Protection process and one off interventions as required. This work will be predominantly focused on our service for Waltham Forest young people
  • Provide advocacy support as required by the needs of the service (for example helpline, visiting and outreach advocacy) and with suitable support and guidance other children’s rights services including acting as Independent Person for independent return interviews, and Appropriate Adult for Age Assessments.
  • Ensure that children and young people working with Coram Voice are informed of and understand their rights.
  • Liaise and negotiate with other agencies concerning specific cases and on general issues as required.
  • Take responsibility for maintaining sound records in line with Coram Voice’s recording guidelines and which can be used in supervision.
  • Complete financial records for recharging agencies for Coram Voice services.
  • Undertake specific tasks related to the development of the advocacy service and consistent with the role of a Coram Voice advocate.
  • To contribute to your personal supervision with your manager and take shared responsibility for your personal development and learning.
  1. Other responsibilities
  • Using your casework experience, take responsibility for highlighting key case studies and examples of poor or positive social work service provision and practice, and supportCoram Voice’s wider storytelling, fundraising and policy work.
  • Promote the advocacy service and Coram Voice to professionals and other stakeholders.
  • To assist with the data collection and reporting for contracts and projects where you have undertaken advocacy or other children’s rights work.
  • Develop a workplan to be agreed and reviewed regularly with your supervisor.
  • Undertake any other reasonable tasks requested by your supervisor, or other designated manager.

The responsibilities contained within this job description are subject to annual review and may need to be adjusted in line with service developments.

April 2017