Prevention and Assessment Support Officers

As a Prevention and Assessment Support Officer, you will be the first point of contact for households facing homelessness or at risk of losing their home. You will play a critical role in providing immediate support, delivering advice, and guiding households through the options available to them. You will be working in a fast-paced environment where empathy, problem-solving, and effective communication are key. By engaging with residents at an early stage, you will help to prevent homelessness, ensuring households are provided with the right support at the right time. Whether it's offering advice on housing options, providing information on rights and responsibilities, or directing households to appropriate support services, your contribution will directly impact the lives of vulnerable households, helping them to secure safe and sustainable housing solutions. Enthusiasm and strong motivation to work within homelessness services, as well as a 'can-do' attitude are key. This role is ideal for someone who is passionate about making a difference, thrives in a dynamic environment, and is committed to supporting people through challenging times.

• Experience of having worked in a fast paced, resident focused environment.
• Excellent knowledge and application of IT systems and software packages.
• Relevant legislative and or procedural knowledge for specialist area.
• Ability to work with minimum supervision, using problem solving skills and initiative to provide a resident focused support service.
• Excellent levels of literacy and numeracy.
• Ability to work flexibly, balancing competing priorities and meeting deadlines whilst understanding the needs, timescales and deadlines of others.
• Ability to deal diplomatically and confidentially with a wider range of stakeholders internally and externally.
• Ability to identify improvements to processes and systems and to share recommendations with the wider team.
Qualifications and Requirements:
• English and Math Qualifications
• Relevant NVQ Level 2 or 3 qualification, Satisfactory employment references and CIFAS identity checks
• Satisfactory declaration of interest;
• This role is subject to safer recruitment practices as it involves work with children and/ or vulnerable adults;
• Satisfactory DBS check;
• As a public authority, we must ensure that members of staff in public-facing roles are able to speak fluent English. This means that they must have a command of spoken English, with confidence and accuracy, sufficient for the effective performance of their role. This requirement does not refer to any particular English language qualifications, regional or international accents, dialects, speech impediments or the tone of conversations. It does not require staff to speak only in English.
  
  Bursting with culture, energy, and opportunity, the London Borough of Waltham Forest is a fantastic and exciting place to work.
We are a highly ambitious borough. Driven by culture and the innate creativity of our residents, we have developed new and innovative ways to build our communities. Our Council is relentlessly resident-focused, insight-led, digitally driven and commercially minded; a Council focused on meeting the needs of our existing and future residents. London Borough of Waltham Forest is one of the employers. This accreditation is a proof of our commitment to creating a healthy, fair and inclusive workplace. This includes fair pay and conditions, workplace well-being, skills and progression and diversity and recruitment., Waltham Forest is a diverse borough where diversity is valued and is integral to both, service delivery and employment of its staff. The Council is proud of its rich mix of communities and as the largest employer in the area, it works hard to respond to the changing needs of its population. We use our statutory duties on race, gender and disability equality and best practice in respect of age, faith and sexual orientation to ensure equality of opportunity in the workplace. The Council is committed to meeting its 4 equality objectives: - Promoting equality of opportunity - Opposing all forms of discrimination, intolerance and disadvantage - Ensuring our workforce reflects the diverse communities of Waltham Forest at all levels. - Providing fair, appropriate, accessible and excellent Services to all. Respecting Diversity is a core Council value. To support the above and reduce the risk of bias in its recruitment activities, the council is operating an anonymous shortlisting process, which hides personal information that can identify individuals until their application has been considered for shortlisting. The council also operates a scheme whereby, for jobs graded up to and including scale SO2, internal candidates are considered first. This includes those candidates who self-identify as having a disability for the purposes of the Disability Confident scheme. For more information, please refer to our recruitment and selection policy. We are keen to support employees to balance their working life with other commitments. Therefore, wherever possible, we will consider working arrangements that suit an individual's personal circumstances whilst still meeting the needs of the Council. If you would like to discuss the possible flexible working options that might be applicable to this role, please contact the person named below or feel free to discuss this during your interview.