Role: Financial Inclusion Officer REF 1746423
Contract Length: 6 months
Location: Fully remote
IR35: Inside
Pay Rate to Intermediary: £22.18 per hour
Spinwell is recruiting for a Financial Inclusion Officer for an excellent opportunity within the public sector.
RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE FINANCIAL INCLUSION OFFICER
- To identify clients from individuals, households or groups who may require financial support.
- Work with clients including those from vulnerable groups; in a non-judgemental way, empowering them to identify, understand and address changes to the benefit system.
- To make recommendations on any hardship grants, awards or payments including Community Care Grants, Crisis Awards, Section 17 Payments, DHPs.
- To be aware of and keep up to date with the wide range of services provided by Income & Awards and partners. Support clients to enable them to have full access to a range of benefits, services and actions to help alleviate any undue hardship, removing possible barriers to change and reducing any potential risk of homelessness.
- Engage with partner services as required including: Citizens Advice Bureau, Money & Debt Advice, Welfare Advice, Employment Support, Volunteering and Skill building, Children & Family Support, Adult Social Care, other council services, Financial Inclusion initiatives, social housing providers and private landlords.
- To promote a strong customer focused performance. Provide impartial, high quality and relevant advice or links on a range of other services that could assist the wider household or group.
- Support clients through key transitions, budgeting, debt advice, financial literacy/ awareness, housing options and other whole household support.
- To help clients maximise their income through increased benefit take up, charitable funding, grants or reduction of expenditure.
- To assist where relevant to ensure Discretionary Housing Payments are in place with a dedicated exit strategy for each household.
- To work closely with other service providers to ensure that where individual needs are complex, appropriate support is identified and accessed.
- Encourage and support clients to find their own long-term solution.
- Produce a needs assessment and action plan for clients at various levels of self-supporting actions.
- To manage varying size and complexity in caseload in a target-driven environment.
- To initiate and maintain systems to help monitor client caseload, output and outcomes for individuals and households.
- Collect and monitor outcomes and supply performance data to support the senior officer to inform other parties, including colleagues, individuals and members.
- To participate in workshops, informal group discussions and presentations to a range of audiences with a diverse range of needs. To actively participate in any identified induction, ongoing training and networking, to contribute to training events as required, exchange information and share good practice.
SKILLS/EXPERIENCE OF THE FINANCIAL INCLUSION OFFICER
- GCSE's Maths and English grades A*-C or 4-9 (or equivalent Level 2 qualifications) or able to demonstrate an equivalent level of numeracy and literacy skills OR Experience in a revenues and benefits environment that allows you to carry out the full range of duties.
- Experience of lone working and implementing a visit programme for customers who present in financial hardship
- Experience of working with customers who are susceptible to financial hardship, offering personal budgeting support and co-ordinating referrals on debt, benefit, housing and employment issues
- Relevant experience of providing financial inclusion support to customers affected by welfare reform changes.
- Relevant experience of working with landlords and other agencies and organisations to support customers with their housing needs
- Experience of working in a Local Welfare Provision environment including administering and assessing discretionary grants or funds to tackle financial hardship.
- Proven delivery of appropriate financial inclusion support that have resulted in positive outcomes for customers to prevent crisis events from re-occurring.
- Knowledge of welfare benefit entitlements and procedures in order to support referrals to specialist advice agencies.
- Experience of managing a large, evolving and complex caseload in a crisis prevention service.
- Experience of working in a demanding, target- driven crisis prevention environment.
- Ability to communicate financial and benefit information effectively with a wide range of people, displaying calmness and empathy as required.
- Excellent organisation skills with the ability to manage priorities and meet deadlines as required.
- Ability to work with minimal supervision to achieve desired outcomes.
- Excellent problem solving skills, with the ability to choose the most relevant pathway/agency for individual or household support to reach a positive outcome.
- Ability to provide relevant and timely information, advice and guidance to clients.
- Skilled in the use of Microsoft Office including Word, Excel and Outlook (or similar)
If you are a Financial Inclusion Officer, apply now or send your CV to Spinwell!
We welcome all applications regardless of background, in line with our commitment to diversity, equality and inclusion.
Applying to this or any other vacancy advertised by Spinwell Ltd constitutes an agreement for Spinwell Ltd to hold your details for 24 months for the purpose of assessing suitability for the advertised position and to make you aware of any other positions deemed suitable of which You will make you aware by means of either email, text or phone. In line with GDPR regulations you are able to request your details be removed from the company data at any time by emailing us