Work Coach

North East England Permanent £competitive Ref: 405549

The Role

Nigel Wright is pleased to support a charitable organisation in their search for a Work Coach. This new role has arisen due to ongoing growth and focuses on helping adults with learning disabilities find employment, self-employment, and volunteering opportunities. By offering skills development, training, volunteering, and work experience placements, the goal is to help clients achieve meaningful work outcomes. The position will require frequent travel across the organization's area of operations.

Principal Duties

Liaise with Local Authority’s Transitions & Learning Disability teams to identify Clients in receipt of Day Services for the Working Journey’s Programme;
Link to Health & Social Care teams and students to promote Working Journeys;
Work collaboratively with Job Centre Plus, the National Careers Services, Schools./Colleges and local employers to access suitable work-experience and employment opportunities;
Work collaboratively with Voluntary Sector, Local Authority and NHS Partners to secure transition from day-care to volunteering & work placements;
Advise on work placements and employment opportunities;
Prepare Clients through job search, application and interview stages;
Provide mentoring & support for Clients who are volunteering;
Provide in-work facilitation for Clients who have progressed to employment;
Provide information and guidance on DWP’s in-work benefits and services to support Clients and hosting employers (e.g. Universal Credit, Access to Work, Disability Confident);
Provide pre-employment & retention support for hosting employers.

The Person

Skills and attributes

Career experience and/or qualification in a relevant discipline (Advice and Guidance, Information, Advice & Guidance, Social Care, Teaching (secondary or FE) (essential)
English and Maths Level 4+/5 (essential)
Disability-specialist training e.g. positive behaviour support, person-centred practice, autism awareness, Makaton, BSL (Desirable)
Recent Safeguarding Adults training (Desirable)
Experience supporting vulnerable adults in to employment, volunteering and/or self-employment (Essential)
Experience working with partnerships within the community e.g. Voluntary Sector, Education, Employers, Job Centre Plus (Essential)
Working with people with learning disability and/or complex needs (Desirable)
Current UK driving licence and access to transportation for the role (or Access to Work ‘to’ and ‘within work’ transport package) (Essential)
Confident IT skills i.e. Windows, Microsoft 365 (email, Word, Publisher, Powerpoint, Excel, Yammer, Teams) and Adobe, web Chat Forums, Video Conference Calling (Facetime, Zoom and MS Teams), social media (Facebook and Instagram) (Essential)