Accommodation Sustainment Officer

The Role:

The Sustainment Officer reports to the Rehousing Placement Team Manager. The Rehousing Team supports single people, couples and families who are experiencing homelessness to move from temporary accommodation into longer-term permanent homes.

The Sustainment Team works closely with providers of Nightly Paid Accommodation and other housing partners to help households successfully maintain their temporary accommodation while awaiting settled housing. The team provides practical support, guidance and early intervention to address issues that may place a tenancy at risk, helping individuals and families build the skills, confidence and resilience needed to sustain their accommodation and achieve positive outcomes.

Working collaboratively with accommodation providers, support services and community organisations, the Sustainment Officer plays a key role in promoting independence, improving wellbeing and supporting people to become active members of their local communities. The post holder will proactively engage with vulnerable individuals and families, providing coaching, mentoring and tailored support to help them overcome barriers and prepare for a successful move into permanent housing.

This is a customer-facing role, where the statutory English language requirement for public sector workers applies.

This position will be subject to a basic criminal record disclosure check.

Working Pattern:

The role is 37 hours a week over 5 days (usually Monday to Friday). The Council operates flexible working.

What you’ll need to succeed:

Please read the role profile for the full details of this role attached below in this advert

This role will be part of a front-line team, which will be responsible and accountable for providing sustainment support to families, singles and childless couples placed in nightly paid accommodation, especially those placed in accommodation such as other nightly paid accommodation either with shared facilities or that is self-contained, who are at risk of losing their accommodation and sleeping rough.

The post-holder will be responsible for supporting a caseload of individuals, who may have complex needs, be former rough sleepers and/or at risk of imminent rough sleeping because they are at risk of losing their accommodation.

Support will range from medium to complex support needs ranging from supporting issues resulting from, but not limited to, drug and alcohol addiction, poor mental health, financial difficulty and physical health problems.

The role holder will work with individuals to put support plans in place and agree actions that prevent the loss of accommodation, ranging from interventions with the provider to signposting to other agencies to attending multi-disciplinary meetings to ensure essential support is provided. Part of this role will include providing regular drop-in sessions in the nightly paid accommodation units to assess client support needs, risk assessments and suitability of the accommodation.

The post-holder will work in a way that is creative and innovative, agile and flexible, and solution focused, tailoring their approach to the needs of the person. They will employ a trauma-informed and psychologically informed approach, building on the individual’s strengths and will seek to reduce harm.

What you’ll get in return:

Cornwall Council’s ambition is to be an employer of choice, a high performing Council and a learning organisation. We commit to providing a reward and benefits package to attract, motivate and reward our employees. We offer a range of flexible working options to our staff. This helps provide our employees with a greater work/life balance. Whilst still ensuring that service needs are met.

Our core employee rewards and benefits include:

· a competitive salary.

· a defined benefit pension scheme, based on your career average earnings. This includes the option for extra voluntary contributions

· a generous annual leave entitlement with the potential to purchase additional leave.

· A national award-winning employee health and wellbeing programme

· Employee benefits scheme giving employees access to a wide range of discounts to local and national goods and services.

Additional Information:

Cornwall Council is unable to offer sponsorship or transfer existing sponsorship for this role.

The full role profile is attached here

We recommend saving a copy of this to refer to if you are invited to interview.

For more information or an informal chat about the role please contact Alex Sparrow at Alex.Sparrow@cornwall.gov.uk

Application Process

Please attach a supporting statement to your application, you can add your Education & Qualifications details manually using the application form timeline or you can upload your CV.

Remember to demonstrate why you are suitable against each of the points marked as ‘Application’ on the Role Profile using examples from your experience or transferable skills. This might be through qualifications or descriptive examples from your work / personal experience, which clearly illustrates what you did and the effect it had.

Guidance on how to complete your application can be found here – The application process.

We recognise that you may choose to use AI tools when preparing your application. We ask that any information you include is an accurate reflection of your own skills, knowledge, experience and achievements. You may be asked to discuss the examples and evidence you provide during the selection process.

We may adapt our shortlisting approach where we receive a high volume of applications. Any shortlisting decisions will be based on the information provided in your application and the essential requirements of the role.

Please note that applications cannot be edited after they have been submitted, please contact careers@cornwall.gov.uk if you have any queries or require assistance with your application.

Existing employees must apply using their Cornwall Council email address through the Opportunity Marketplace on Oracle.