Yardley and Hodge Hill Early Help (YEH/HHEH) are two of the ten Early Help districts across the city of Birmingham lead by Birmingham Voluntary Service Council (BVSC) and delivered by Barnardo's. The aim of the provision is to build capacity within local communities to ensure that children, young people and families have access to the right support at the right time before issues and concerns escalate. We see that Hardship Grants / Household Support
Fund as sitting within this provision and our advisor as being part of our Early Help team.
Barnardo's have been supporting the delivery of Household Support Fund hardship grants to families in the Yardley area since the grants began (across 5 rounds), from November 2024 and round 6 we began to deliver the same to Hodge Hill families too. These grants are now known as BVSC's Hardship Grant Community Fund, part of Birmingham City Council's wider Household Support Fund (HSF). Grants of up to £200 to Birmingham households currently facing hardship, intended for support with food and energy payments. The fund is intended to support households to cover essentials such as food and energy (gas, electricity, and water) costs.
Outcomes:
This is an Support Worker role for the Hardship Grant Community Fund/Household Support Fund within Barnardo's and Early Help – it sum, it is to contact families, primarily by telephone, offering empathy and support for families at a time of need by providing a practical response of enabling families to access hardship grants as well as advice about other support available to support with their needs.
The Support Worker will be supported and take day to day directions from our HSF Advisor who maintains oversight of the waiting list and understand demand and priorities.
As the Support Worker you will, contact families in a timely way, complete accurate grant submissions and manage any issues with applications.
Candidate will need good combination of IT, telephone, communication, time-management and independent working skills.
When completing your application please refer to your skills knowledge and experience in relation to the Person Specification, Job Description and Additional Information document. This should be done with an understanding of the context of the service described.
Although this contract has a permanent status, please be aware that this post is subject to funding currently to 31 December 2025 and therefore should this funding not be extended further, you may be subject to a redundancy consultation or a TUPE arrangement.
Please note due to the high volume of applications for some posts, this advert might close before the displayed closing date. We recommend that you apply for this role as soon as possible.
Pay & Reward Framework
We know that our colleagues go above and beyond in delivering our vital work, driven by their passion and commitment to Barnardo's . We also know that we can only realise our ambitions and achieve better outcomes for more children, thanks to the talent, hard work and creativity of our people.
For all these reasons, we are committed to a new approach to pay and reward, to ensure it is fair, attractive and progressive, which was rolled out in April 2023. This is a positive change for the charity, and a part of our Strategy. It will assist us in supporting colleagues to belong, thrive and grow in their colleague journey at Barnardo's and in time will offer clear routes of progression for colleagues in both their career and their pay.
Whilst the full pay band and salary range is advertised, our approach to starting salaries is to appoint between the minimum to mid-point of the pay band – this ensures that pay steps are available to reward our colleagues annually based on their contribution to excellence and alignment to our values and behaviours. More details on Barnardo's pay framework can be found upon application.
Benefits
Workplace Offer: What it means for you
The world of work has changed. We are understanding of what works best for our colleagues both current and future as we look to embrace this new way of working. Our hybrid working initiative is based on trust, flexibility and empowerment. We understand our workplace offer means different things to different people, and we encourage those conversations. This may mean working at one of our stores, services, working at home, at one of our Collaboration Hubs or any combination of these.
1. Barnardo's believe in creating equality of opportunity in the workplace and supporting people to manage their work-life balance; we are therefore open to offering flexible working arrangements.
2. Annual Leave entitlement for full-time colleagues is 26 days per annum, increasing to 27 days per annum, after 3 years Barnardo's service, 29 days per annum, after 5 years Barnardo's service and 30 days per annum, after 7 years Barnardo's service. Those working less than full time are entitled to the same level of holiday pro rata
3. The ability to buy up to another 5 days annual leave via our HolidayPlus scheme
4. A host of family friendly leave options including company Maternity Paternity and Adoption pay; together with all family additional leave options
5. Service related sick pay from day 1
6. Access to a Group Personal Pension with a matched 4% or 6% contribution from Barnardo's. Ability to pay via salary sacrifice to garner both tax and NI savings on your own contribution
7. Death in service cover of 4x annual earnings for all staff contributing to our Group Personal Pension
8. Cycle2work scheme
9. Interest free season ticket loans
10. Discounts and cashback from at high street shops including major supermarkets, cinemas, gyms, leisure/theme parks, holidays and much more via our Benefit Portal
11. 20% discount at Barnardo's stores
12. Opportunity to purchase a health cash plan to claim towards dental, glasses, therapy etc
13. Free access to round the clock employee assistance program for advice and support
14. Access to Barnardo's Learning and Development offer
*T&C's