Housing Rights Worker - Homewards

Location: Poole, Dorset

Salary: £31,133 per annum pro rata

Hours: Full time 37.5 hour per week

Contract: Fixed Term until end of July 2026

Closing date: Sunday 6th July 2025 at 11:30pm

Are you compassionate, proactive and collaborative with experience in housing and homelessness advice and advocacy? If you are looking for an exciting new career opportunity, then join Shelter as a Housing Rights Worker and you could soon be making a real difference to people affected by the housing emergency.

About the role

We have received a Homewards Fund grant to provide a Housing Rights Worker to deliver community outreach work targeting families and young people in Bournemouth. We will be working in partnership with The Bourne Academy, a secondary school and sixth form, to engage families who might not otherwise get the help they need, targeting support before crisis point to help prevent homelessness. Where families are already homeless, processes will be in place to reduce the impact on pupils learning.

Your role will be to deliver casework support, advice drop-ins and awareness raising sessions for parents, housing rights awareness workshops for Academy staff and tenancy rights and responsibilities advice for sixth form students to equip them to manage their own accommodation once living independently. You will provide practical assistance, advice and advocacy and links with other Shelter services, such as our Legal team and DIY Skills Adviser, to enable households to resettle, prevent homelessness and improve their circumstances.

Our grant from Homewards will allow us to test a new model of working, in partnership with The Bourne Academy. We are grateful for Homewards support and hope it will make a long term difference to families and young people in West and East Howe.

About you

You will have the ability to engage and work collaboratively with individuals, communities and with all stakeholders, including running group workshops and presentations. You have experience, knowledge of and/or proven ability in housing and homelessness advice and advocacy, with the ability to progress to specialist level knowledge. Essential to the role will be good time management, carrying out casework related interviews, maintaining detailed case records and offering advice and support to clients to inform their decisions.

Benefits

In return we offer a competitive salary as well as a wide range of benefits, including 30 days of annual leave (pro rata), enhanced family friendly policies, pension and interest free travel loans. Our employees also have access to a tenancy deposit loan, payroll giving, cycle to work scheme and an employee assistance programme.

About the team

Dorset Hub has been providing housing advice and support services within Dorset since 2000. We have bases in Poole and Weymouth and contracts to deliver Housing First support across the Dorset Council area, along with Legal Aid Advice, including a court desk service at Bournemouth and Weymouth County Courts.

Active in our communities, our Housing Rights Workers will deliver advice sessions within local organisations and offer advocacy to individuals and groups to empower them to resolve their situation. We have partnerships with community groups and people with lived experience of housing issues, using our understanding of the issues people experience to bring about wider change locally.

About Shelter

Home is a human right. It s our foundation and where we thrive. Yet every day millions of people are being devastated by the housing emergency.

We exist to defend the right to a safe home. Because home is everything.

We need ambitious, passionate people to join us. This is your chance to play a part in the fundamental change we are striving to achieve.

Our enemy is the social injustice at the core of the escalating housing emergency. To win this fight, we must be representative of the people we are here to help and those who support our movement. In all our people decisions, we take pride in being inclusive, equitable and transparent. We are committed to combating racism both within and outside Shelter. We welcome you on our journey to becoming truly anti-racist.

How to apply

Please click Apply for Job on the advert. You are required to submit a CV and a supporting statement with responses to the following points in the About you section of the job description of no more than 350 words each. Please provide specific examples following the STAR format:

• Knowledge and experience of housing and homelessness advice and advocacy and the ability to progress to specialist level knowledge
• Ability to listen to, engage and work with individuals and communities
• Experience of delivering and/or ability to deliver group workshops and presentations

Safeguarding Statement

Safeguarding is everyone's business. Shelter is committed to protecting the health, wellbeing and human rights of those we support, and enabling them to live free from harm, abuse and neglect. All our staff will be expected to observe professional standards of behaviour and conduct their work in line with our Safeguarding Policies.

Shelter does not accept unsolicited CVs from external recruitment agencies nor accept the fees associated with them