Specialist Youth Practitioner - North Tyneside, United Kingdom - EDGE NE

Description

Job Advert - Specialist Youth practitioner

FULL TIME

Salary £22000
**Location

• South Northumberland, North Tyneside**EDGE is an organisation covering the Northumbria and Cumbria area, engaging identified young people in our mentoring programme, based on a lived experience model. Our Youth Mentors work with victims and perpetrators of serious youth violence and other gangrelated offences, and Child Criminal Exploitation (including County Lines).

As a Specialist Youth practitioner, you will help our Young People to:

• Be safe from Exploitation
• Move away from offending
• Make positive choices
• Achieve Positive Outcomes

Our Specialist Youth Practitioner does this by:

• Helping Young People understand their behaviour and its consequences
• Diversion away from Serious Youth Violence and Criminal Exploitation
• Promoting positive changes
• Working with other support services, including enforcement
• Providing practical help such as housing support
• Helping our client's families to support them

Our Specialist Youth Practitioner works in a range of locations:

• Embedded in local authority multi-agency teams
• In the community
• Where a young person feels safe

People can't be helped from behind a desk
- so much time is spent with our clients in the places they know.

The best results come from partnership working, so staff work closely with various agencies to get the best outcomes for their clients.

We aim to see our clients using mainstream community-based services to get what they need.

The Youth practitioner will cover south Northumberland (Cramlington and surrounding areas), North Tyneside, supporting young people involved in or at risk of gang activity, knife crime, exploitation, and vulnerability.

This role will be embedded within a multi-disciplinary team, including police, probation, the offending youth service, and children's social care.

An element of travel, particularly to our Head Office, will be required for this role.


Duties and responsibilities:

• To develop and maintain relationships with other agencies, ensuring a steady flow of referrals to the project
• To complete initial needs assessments with the Young Person and support them in developing individual action plans and regularly reviewed to assess progress.
• To promote interagency collaboration in the assessment and planning process and to include involved agencies in the delivery of the services
• To support individuals who are affected by domestic violence, CSE, Mental health, grooming and exploitation, this will include working with victims and perpetrators
• To support young people who are affected by gang and serious youth violence, this will include working with victims and perpetrators
• To carry and review thorough risk management plans with young people and family, ensuring each family member has an ageappropriate safety plan
• Provide a clientled support service that responds to individual needs. Key elements will include supporting with housing, finances, schooling, parenting, health, and criminal justice
• To deliver the service in a targeted manner, working through identified issues on the action plan, promoting case closure as an achievable outcome
• To provide social support to children and family members; this will include identification of need, liaison and referral to specialist agencies
• To close cases effectively and positively, identifying a survival plan for the client that can be used for ongoing support and agencies that can be used if serious problems develop in the future
• To keep accurate records and assist with monitoring information and evaluation of the project
• To carry out other similar tasks as directed by the manager and work at all times per the EDGE NE code of conduct.

Person Specification

EDGE values the experience, knowledge, and worth of lived experience individuals. Risk assessments and DBS checks will be undertaken, and willing to work towards a Youth qualification.

Essential:

• Experience of working with people who are vulnerable in a community setting and proven ability to assess clients' needs
• Experience of working with young people who have complex needs
• Knowledge and experience of working with young people involved in or at risk of the gang and serious youth violence
• Experience and ability to recruit, engage and keep the target client group motivated
• Excellent knowledge and understanding of providing support, advice and advocacy and the ability to communicate this knowledge in a variety of forms
• Experience in networking and developing positive links with other agencies to further the aims of the project
• Knowledge of local authority housing, benefits and social care structures
• Experience of working with young offenders, exoffenders, people affected by domestic violence, their families and those involved with the criminal justice system
• Strong IT skills, including Word, Excel and Outlook. Ability to set u