First Intensive Support Worker

Intensive Support Worker
- Complex lives

Location:

Housing First, Unit 4 Nelson Trade Centre, Nelson Street, Belfast, BT15 1BH

Salary: £25,726.86

Contract:

Permanent

Hours:

35 per week (Varied Shifts)

• Enhanced Annual Leave – 35 days per year, increasing as your length of service increases
• Paid Sick Leave
• Company maternity & paternity pay
• Contributory Pension scheme
• Health Cash Back & Rewards Plan
• Christmas Savers club
• Bluelight discount card

Plus many opportunities to learn and develop within the organisation

Depaul is a cross border charity supporting some of the most marginalised individuals, couples and families experiencing homelessness. Our mission is to end homelessness and change the lives of those affected by it. Would you like to help us to meet our mission? We are a values‑led organisation and aim, at all times, to live and breathe these values in our everyday work.

Our values are based on four key principles:

• We celebrate the potential of people
• We put our words into action
• We aim to take a wider role in civil society
• We believe in rights and responsibilities

If you choose to work for Depaul

The primary role of the post holder will be to act as a trusted key worker and to ensure effective coordination of a wraparound support plan for each client, which will have been developed through the Belfast Complex Lives Multi‑Disciplinary Team (MDT) process.

You will be a member of a multi‑disciplined team using holistic approaches to support Depaul service users. Working to a housing‑led, low threshold, harm reduction approach, where service users receive a high degree of support and advice. Depaul has a commitment to service user participation and to empowering our service users to manage their own lives.

Your role will ensure effective case management for a caseload of approximately 7–10 highly complex and entrenched individuals who experience multiple connected and dependent challenges, usually including homeless/unstable housing, problematic drug use, mental ill health, offending behaviour, poor physical health, often underpinned by trauma.

• Provide effective ongoing case management and relationship building with service users and those broader agencies/services supporting them, via sustained contact (including triage, initial support, detailed assessment and care planning)
• Support people to engage with services, stabilise and settle into accommodation settings
• Connect with local community support and encourage positive lifestyle choices to progress in the Service User’s recovery journey
• Liaise with Belfast Complex Lives MDT partners and other agencies to secure support for, and activity toward, developing and delivering wrap‑around, dynamic and responsive support plans
• Organise key worker sessions with individual clients based on need; focusing on responsibility‑taking, reflection, action planning and overcoming crisis and trigger points that may result in disengagement
• Manage and monitor progress; further develop and update support plans demonstrating progression, related activity and achievement against outcomes
• Develop effective working relationships with staff across key community, voluntary and statutory services, including convening multi‑agency meetings and case conferences/reviews to agree actions and ownership from services when/where needed
• Regularly review and address barriers to progress in partnership and with individual contacts
• Report progress to Complex Lives MDT and elevate issues as necessary
• Be responsible and resilient in the face of challenging behaviour and individuals who may be in crisis; disclose and discuss risks responsibly, operate within existing data sharing frameworks, acknowledge areas of limitation, and liaise with all linked professionals responsibly
• Use innovative and creative thinking to find solutions and identify key interventions that will have a positive or preventative impact on the individual and reduce crisis management and/or disengagement
• Work within the wider Complex Lives MDT members and fellow support workers to define and agree priorities, share workloads and support colleagues to achieve team objectives
• Adapt…