Overview
Salary: £37938 – £44711
Shift hours: 37
An exciting opportunity has arisen for a customer focused Welfare Rights Officer, working with Refugees and Newly arrived Communities, to join The Migration team in conjunction with the Job Shop. This specialist role will support those clients who are being supported by the City Council Migration Team.
Coventry City Council Migration Team is committed to supporting refugees and newly arrived communities to find sustainable employment and to assist them through challenging economic times and major welfare reform. The Welfare Rights Officer will play a key role in supporting CCC Migration Team clients, enabling them to deal with queries quickly, clearly and effectively. They will also manage their own caseload of benefit and debt cases where the aim is to support clients towards employment and financial independence.
Areas of focus will be:
To screen new arrivals and create action plans to be monitored at regular follow-up meetings.
To work out better-off calculations and discuss advantages of working income.
Outreach work involving delivering information and guidance sessions to newly arrived cohorts and long-term clients on financial stability.
To work closely with the Employment Officer, Caseworkers and Housing Team to ensure action plans are followed through and supported.
To produce reports on progress of clients.
The successful candidate will provide operational and strategic management of the service and will in addition have experience of providing high quality specialist welfare benefits advice to a range of customers, with particular experience of working with refugees and newly arrived communities and an understanding of the challenges and barriers the may face during their employment search.
The successful candidate will be expected to support clients sited at different venues so will need to be flexible in providing support where it is needed most.
This post is exempted under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 and as such appointment to this post will be conditional upon the receipt of a satisfactory response to a check of police records via Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS).
An experienced Welfare Rights Adviser who has extensive understanding of the UK welfare system and is well organised, able to work on your own initiative and have a proven ability to engage with a wide range of stakeholders.
You will need to be excellent at developing positive working relationships, an effective communicator, able to work with a wide range of people from different backgrounds and organisations. You will be focusing on refugees and newly arrived communities, disabilities, and mental health, and crucially have the skills and ability to listen, understand and identify how you can support each customer in a positive manner to becoming financially stable.
This is a 37 hours per week post on a fixed term contract until 31 December 2026.
If you need help or support to complete your application, please visit our accessibility page to see how we can assist you.
Guaranteed Interview Scheme – As part of our commitment to inclusion, we offer guaranteed interviews for specific groups of people. To qualify, you’ll need to meet the minimum requirements for the role and identify with one of the below criteria:
- Members of the Armed Forces and veterans
- Are currently in care or have previously been in care
- If you consider yourself to be disabled or if you have a long-term health condition
For full details on the application process please read the attached document on our jobs page labelled ‘Coventry City Council Application Process’. If there is any evidence of a candidate using AI to complete their application, then the application will be rejected unless the candidate can provide a justification which the Council considers to be reasonable.
Interview date(s): tbc
Reference: coventrycc/TP/43597/10643