Activities and Befriending Coordinator

Purpose

This role comprises two parts, and the Activities and Befriending Coordinator is expected to:

Support clients, especially those in Hamlet House, soon to be opened as a 17-bed house for people experiencing homelessness. This support will be through meaningful activities, life skills, and support groups that help them progress in their recovery.

Plan and introduce a befriending service to support Hamlet House residents in overcoming social isolation, building their confidence, and promoting their integration into the community.

Main duties

Activities and Support Groups

Transform our existing breakfast and social club for vulnerable and homeless people into a vibrant, safe, and welcoming space by planning and delivering a diverse range of support groups and meaningful activities (e.g., life skills (cooking, gardening), mental health, substance misuse, literacy, and return-to-work sessions) tailored to meet the residents’ needs.

You will engage with Hamlet House residents and clients to identify their needs and collaborate with partner organisations to co-create support that improves social, educational, volunteering, and employment outcomes.

Promote activities to Hamlet House residents, all homeless support service clients, and across services.

Manage Volunteers: Train, supervise, and support volunteers involved in activities and in the breakfast club, ensuring their work complies with organisational policies and best practices.

Befriending service

This is a new service; training and support will be provided.

Design, implement, and manage a new befriending service that matches Hamlet House residents with trained volunteer befrienders to reduce social isolation, build confidence, and support community integration.

This involves:

• Training volunteers to become befrienders and then supervising and supporting them, ensuring their work aligns with organisational & safeguarding policies and best practices.

• Matching volunteers with a Hamlet House resident, supervising and monitoring the relationships from both the volunteer and resident perspectives, pre-empting and resolving issues before they escalate to ensure that both clients and volunteers are safe and experience positive outcomes.

• Co-ordinating the day-to-day running of the Befriending Service

• Retaining volunteer befrienders by supporting and checking in on them, gathering feedback, and providing training as needed.

• Promoting befriending opportunities to ensure a pool of suitable, trained befrienders are available to support residents.

• Ensure that we remain up to date with best practices in befriending service management and develop strong links with key stakeholder groups in this field: The Befriending Network.

Other duties

• Keep attendance records in the Inform database and ensure that learning from any work is captured, communicated and used to improve practice.

• Monitor and evaluate the impact of services, capturing client journeys and stories

• Build relationships with partner organisations to expand our offering

Knowledge and Experience

• Good standard of education with excellent literacy and communication skills (essential).)

• Strong administration, organised, comfortable with IT, experienced with databases (Essential)

• Practical experience in organising support for vulnerable people and working with volunteers. (Essential)

• Experience in coordinating a befriending service or similar service

• Confident in speaking with and engaging partners, brokering relationships that help to co-locate and co-create support groups.

• Understanding the key issues affecting people experiencing homelessness and knowledge of befriending or other mentoring schemes. (Desirable)

• Knowledge and experience of training others and forming a team of volunteers (Desirable)

• An interest in promoting uptake of the support groups and befriending service, using own initiative to drum up support and attendance.

• Willingness to embrace and support the Christian ethos of the Rainbow Centre

Skills and ability

• Ability to relate to and engage assertively and effectively with vulnerable people, so they feel motivated to participate in the activities and support groups.

• Supervision and volunteer management skills (essential)

• Highly effective interpersonal skills, including the ability to work as part of a team, especially with the Support Officers and new and existing volunteers, to achieve objectives.

• Ability to build and maintain positive working relationships with community partners and relevant organisations collaboratively.

• Ability to provide information and guidance as appropriate, maintain clear records for others to use, and present information in electronic and paper formats.

• Knowledge of health & safety and risk assessment.

• Comply with and promote Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, Safeguarding, Professional boundaries and Confidentiality as specified by policies and procedures.

• An understanding of and empathy with the Christian ethos of the Rainbow Centre.

• Flexible and willing to undertake other related activities or tasks that may arise.

• Attend team meetings and required training.

The post holder is required to complete & hold a DBS check with satisfactory results