Position: Work Coach
Location: London (covering mainly North and West London areas)
Salary: £28,655 - £34,397
Type: Permanent
The Role
This role plays a key part in the delivery of a new government funded programme that offers an early-intervention work and health support and assessment service. This provides holistic support to overcome health-related barriers to employment, and a single, joined-up gateway to other support services.
The Work and Health Coach provide highly effective support to individuals and guide them on their journey to returning, remaining or finding new employment while also supporting them to improve their health and wellbeing. The Work and Health Coach will also be instrumental in supporting participants to remove health related barriers by sourcing and funding appropriate interventions.
Essential:
You will have:
- Basic understanding of health conditions including mental and physical. Alongside this able to demonstrate a working knowledge of common treatment routeways and healthy lifestyle practices
- Experience providing case management support to a caseload of clients with health and/or employment related barriers
- Understanding of the practical impact of common health conditions on an individual's ability to work
- Excellent IT skills, including familiarity with Microsoft Office software and previous experience of working with databases
Main Duties and Responsibilities
o Manage a diverse caseload of clients providing information, advice and guidance to support clients to address problems in the workplace to help them return to work, remain in work or find new employment
o Meet and support clients to understand the barriers they are facing utilising a version of the Dialog+ approach. You will identify their aspirations and goals by assessing their needs and working with them to coproduce an action plan that will help to accomplish their objectives
o Assess programme participants' wider needs related to work which may include directing them towards benefits/welfare advice, mental/physical health with an onward referral partner
o Those participants where a mental and/or physical health condition is a significant barrier to employment the Work and Health Coach will be required to identify and enrol the support intervention necessary to remove that barrier
o Where applicable, advocate for clients with their employer to address problems and find solutions to complex workplace matters to increase the likelihood of clients remaining in work
o Conduct holistic Dialog+ assessments with programme participants providing wellbeing advice and the promotion of healthy lifestyle changes
o Provide employment coaching, including careers guidance, CV building, interview technique and job brokerage
o Review, analyse and interpret contracts of employment, organisational policies/procedures, report and other documentation for the accurate provision of information, advice and guidance to clients
o Demonstrate a sound understanding of the factors required to facilitate and enable an individual's return to work as well as the issues that a person can face on returning to work and the skills needed to manage the return to work
o Awareness of the secondary effects on the individual including mental health, impact on confidence and steps to mitigate against a further absence from work or unemployment
o Knowledge that many individuals with mental health conditions may also have primary or secondary health conditions and disabilities and a thorough understanding of the implications of these conditions in the workplace
o Work in close collaboration with the internal Multi-Disciplinary Team (MDT) function to present and discuss cases. When decided and/or required by MDT signpost clients to referral partners by building and maintaining a network of onward referral partners who offer other forms of support
o Provide education and support to employers, as agreed with the individual, which may include negotiating adjustments, return to work strategy and on-going contact with the employer to ensure job retention
o Upon returning to employment or securing new employment, continue to maintain the relationship with programme participants through regular reviews, visits, monitoring and other in-work support to help sustain employment.
Skills & Experience
o Basic understanding of health conditions including mental and physical. Alongside this able to demonstrate a working knowledge of common treatment routeways and healthy lifestyle practices
o Demonstrable experience of successfully working to targets
o Relevant experience of handling complex cases, provision of support to colleagues and/or subordinate employees guiding on best practice and coaching others to achieve excellence in their roles
o Experience providing case management support to a caseload of clients with health and/or employment related barriers
o Understanding of the practical impact of common health conditions on an individual's ability to work
o Ability to manage a caseload of individuals with different needs and goals
o Practical experience in accessing external support services and well-developed networking skills
o Empathetic and with ability to quickly build rapport and strong relationships with a range of clients and stakeholders
o Professional and credible both to employers, clients, health professionals and referral partners
o Demonstrably committed and resilient, flexible and innovative