Down to Earth Development Worker, QUAKER SOCIAL ACTION

Location

Office-based (near Euston) with some home working.

£22,876 or £23,965, depending upon hours (£39,216 full time equivalent), NJC scales 21-25.

Down to Earth.

Permanent.

21-22 hours per week.

Down to Earth co-manager – direct support lead.

To support the delivery of QSA’s flagship funeral poverty service, Down to Earth, offering direct support for bereaved people on low incomes across the UK.

Quaker Social Action’s mission is twofold. We enable people on low incomes to seek solutions to the issues affecting their lives. We listen and respond to the needs of communities and run practical, sustainable and collaborative projects.

Secondly, we share our learning where we see the potential to bring benefit to communities outside of our own – by running professional training, and by speaking truth to power to seek structural change.

Our services include crisis support for those unable to afford funerals; practical support for people experiencing homelessness, such as a mobile library and a community kitchen space; and free mindfulness and wellbeing programmes.

Learn more about our practical action against poverty >

QSA has a rich 150-year history with roots in the Quaker movement. Our work is still guided by Quaker values like Truth and Justice, and we value our place within the Quaker community. At the same time, there is nothing religious about our work: our services, jobs and volunteering roles are open to all.

Down to Earth is a service dedicated to providing information, support and advocacy on behalf of people who find themselves struggling to pay for a funeral. Down to Earth delivers free support through online resources and via a national helpline; explaining what is available and appropriate to each individual’s situation and personal beliefs and ultimately helping clients to find a funeral that is both affordable and meaningful.

In the last fifteen years, Down to Earth has helped over 9,000 clients. Off the back of our breakthrough Fair Funerals campaign ), Down to Earth has continued to advocate for change in the funeral industry and in government, sharing stories and evidence from our ongoing front-line casework as we do so.

Our development workers support a caseload of clients directly via our phone helpline. To do this well requires a very sensitive manner, as well as an ability to move practically through the options available to someone. This work involves tailoring support to an individual’s needs and being incredibly organised since many callers will require follow up work over weeks or sometimes months.

A typical day may involve providing information about funerals over the phone to bereaved callers, helping clients understand which benefits they may be eligible for, supporting someone with an application to a charity, and developing an online resource.

You will need to be a great ambassador for our work, speaking plainly about a subject matter many find difficult. There is an exciting breadth to the service; as we balance the existing support we can offer directly to clients with the sharing of our work and services with partner organisations through training. The rewards will be in having a varied workload, within a friendly work environment and making a direct contribution to the charitable aims of QSA.

Down to Earth talk to people every day who are living through one of the worst times of their lives, so the need for supportive colleagues is high. Due to the nature of the work, the team work more in the office than at home to support each other, with someone in the office every day and the whole team generally working together in the office on a regular day each week.

The various teams at QSA undertake very different tasks but there is a strong sense of collaboration and of celebrating the successes of other teams with gusto and goodwill. Our staff are enthusiastic and engaged with what they do, and there is both an openness and a solid commitment to social justice that is visible…