This role is based entirely in a custodial setting, whereby you’ll be offering financial advice to participants referred through the prison and community services. 

The Growth Companies Employment team have an exciting opportunity for an Employment Advisor- Finance, Benefit and Debt (FBD) to support a caseload of participants in both the community and prisons settings to progress them on their journey towards accessing benefits and resolving debt issues whilst providing budgetary skills advice and personal spending guidance to reduce the risk of reoffending.

The successful candidate will deliver high performance levels, compliant activity and customer service standards on the CRS Finance, Benefit and Debt service and support the Service Manager to ensure that service and business objectives are achieved.

Key Responsibilities:

  • Working with a caseload of participants, in both the community and Prison settings, to progress them on their journey towards accessing benefits, inclusive of adhering to the responsibilities for making claims 
  • Resolving debt issues, including the establishment of debt, and rent repayment plans
  • Providing personal spending guidance and budgetary skills advice etc. 
  • Supporting and acting as liaison between appropriate parties, such as landlords, utility suppliers, phone contractors and other creditors, banks, credit unions, and so on
  • Building strong and positive relationships with participants, enabling them to make well-informed choices and to appropriately assess sources of support, leading to the joint development of an action plan of supportive interventions
  • Providing a tailored framework of support that matches service user (SU) learning styles, such as face-to-face, digital, video and telephony-based interventions.
  • Being responsible for following up on service user actions to ensure that timely progress is made with these
  • Liaising with National Probation Service officers, and completing all associated recording of these interactions, tracking and management information details, as directed, accurately and on a timely basis
  • Promoting the additional choices available to service users, for example third sector support
  • Able to sequence interventions and support based on priority of need
  • Ensuring that all required data entry to the relevant digital applications is accurate and compliant
  • Deliver training / information sessions

    •   About you:

  • Ideally to have experience working in training, advice & guidance, and counselling environments
  • Experience working with vulnerable customer groups, current offenders, or marginalised groups
  • Good knowledge of welfare-to-work and its customer base, training, education, and employment opportunities
  • Warm, pleasant demeanour
  • Flexible and adaptable

    •   Skills Required:

  • Must have previous experience case loading or working with ex-offenders or the marginalised and demotivated 
  • Sound grasp of the issues of debt and the issues that may cause individuals to mis-manage their personal finances or to breach their conditions for claiming DWP / Jobcentre Plus benefits
  • The ability to work under pressure in a high-performance environment
  • Flexible approach to work, including a willingness to travel and occasional unsociable hours
  • Delivering services to service users who are still in custody, inclusive of attending prisons to work face-to-face
  • Ability to work to Key Performance Indicators and targets
  • Strong integrity and data security knowledge
  • Time-management and strong organisation skills
  • Excellent communication skills