Fife Carers Centre seeks a Carer Support Worker (Localities) to join their team.

Fife Carers Centre is a well-regarded and well-established organisation that has supported thousands of families and unpaid carers throughout Fife since 1995. The vision of Fife Carers Centre is to ensure that unpaid carers throughout Fife are valued, recognised, and supported to have equal access to a good quality of life that is not prejudiced by their caring role.

You will be based at the Fife Carers Centre in Kirkcaldy, but you will also be working from home and in the community, as part of normal work you will be expected to travel throughout Fife, particularly in the City of Dunfermline area.

Your work will include providing a sensitive, person-centred support service for unpaid and family carers. You’ll be assisting carers to maintain their physical and mental wellbeing by providing carers with a comprehensive information service to enable them to make informed choices about their own emotional, physical, and economic wellbeing. This will include giving one-to-one support to carers in order that they know how to access services helping them to develop self-advocacy and, where necessary, advocate on the carer’s behalf.

You’ll be supporting carers to identify and achieve their own outcomes using the Carer Support Planning process and providing carers with a benefit check, assisting with benefit applications, and very importantly providing a listening ear for carers.

Carers of West Lothian is looking for a Self-Directed Support Worker to join their team. This is a new post funded by Inspiring Scotland for 3 years. The post holder will; identify and support carers and people with a learning and/ or physical disability to understand Self-Directed Support (SDS) and social care support; provide information, advice and support to those considering or in receipt of SDS and provide individual and group support.

VOCAL - Voice of Carers Across Lothian - seeks two enthusiastic and experienced Carer Brokerage Practitioners to join its busy and expanding team to provide brokerage support to carers across Edinburgh and Midlothian.

VOCAL is a carer-led organisation and provides a wide range of services to support unpaid carers in their caring role. Postholders will be expected to work as part of a team, improve outcomes for carers and maximise uptake of VOCAL and community services.

Postholders will be part of a SDS focused project, VOCAL about Independent Living funded by Support in the Right Direction, Inspiring Scotland. They will liaise with staff, relevant organisations and the funder whilst running the project, including Lothian Centre for Inclusive Living (LCiL) who will also have a funded post as part of this project . SDS carer support is already well established at VOCAL, and postholders will be able to benefit from the expertise of the practitioners who have been involved with SDS support to date.

Applicants will evidence excellent people, and communication skills, brokerage and person-centred support work. Applicants will also demonstrate awareness of the diverse range of caring situations, the impact of caring on peoples’ lives and barriers carers face at different points of the caring journey. Good working knowledge of health and social care will be expected, with preference given to candidates with applied knowledge of self-directed support. Applicants will be digitally competent and effective communicators with individuals, carer groups and partner agencies.

Would you like to make a difference to a person’s quality of life? Would you like to learn BSL while being paid? We are looking for caring and motivated Support Workers to support deaf BSL users to join our team. Could that be you?

Who are we?

Deaf Action is a deaf-led charity, supporting and celebrating deaf people. We were established in 1835 and work with deaf people across Scotland and the South of England. Our work is geared towards empowering all deaf people to achieve their potential and fully participate in society, with equality of rights, access, and opportunity.

As well as our outreach service in Edinburgh, we are expanding our service provision in Glasgow and are looking for people who can make a major contribution to our plans for innovation and growth and who have the commitment and enthusiasm to contribute to the work of our support services to Deaf people throughout Edinburgh and Glasgow.

You can find out more about us at deafaction.org.

About you

We are looking for people who are caring, fun, motivated, willing to learn and show initiative. However, you would need some experience of working in a support service and managing /overseeing a team.

We will provide on the job training with the opportunity to complete formal qualifications in social care. If you have knowledge of BSL, or are a BSL user that is a bonus, however we will provide training if not.

The ideal candidates will be fully committed to our values, which can be found on our website.

The role

You will be leading a team to support *deaf people living in the community. As well as leading a team you will be lone working in the community, delivering a person-centred service supporting deaf people within their own living environment, to enable them to fully participate in the decisions affecting their lives, ensuring that wherever possible, service users benefit from informed choice, control, and independence. This will include both activities at home and within the community which will promote independence and social inclusion.

You will be accountable to the Support Services Area Manager. By working together, you will ensure that a consistent, high quality support service is provided to deaf service users in their own homes, and that staff are supported to develop and maintain such a service.

Due to the nature of this role, its essential that you can drive and have access to a car.

*deaf: this to includes Deaf Sign Language users, deafened, deafblind and hard of hearing people.

You will be asked:

• To actively monitor and develop individual and team performance by ensuring effective supervision and Performance Development Reviews/Reports (PDRs).

• Be responsible for any risk assessments at the service users home as part of your Health and Safety responsibilities.

• To provide clear direction, co-ordination, feedback, and day to day line management for the work of a delegated group of staff. Thus, ensuring their motivation to provide outcome focused, person centred services.

• To assess any new service users for the service and match them with staffs.

• To be involved in recruitment for new staff for the service.

• To take an active role in assessments / recordings and to work with service users to develop their skills and abilities to achieve identified outcomes.

• To assist service users with personal care tasks where appropriate.

• To be involved, as appropriate, with all household tasks, maximising service users’ participation.

• To record the day-to-day finances (where relevant) and household budgets of service users.

• To enable service users to access information to be fully informed of their rights and valid expectations from the service provided.

• To ensure the health, safety and security of individuals and their environment.

What is on offer? What do we offer?

• Occupational pension scheme with employer contributions of 6%.

• 32 days leave pro rata (including bank holidays) pro rata for part time.

• 24/7 access to an Employee Assistance Programme provided by Health Assured.

• In-house Mental Health First Aiders.

• Access to the Cycle to Work Scheme and IT Voucher Scheme.

• Ongoing support for learning and development through our PDR process

• Death in service benefit