Tenancy Sustainment Officer

at  Dorset Councils

The purpose of the tenancy sustainment officer position is threefold – 1st, to actively intervene with households upstream to assist them to maintain their existing accommodation, reducing the risk of homelessness from occurring, 2nd, to working with homeless households to empower and support them to secure appropriate alternate accommodation by removing barriers and 3rd to assist households into new and appropriate accommodation and put in place measures that makes that property long term sustainable, reducing the risk of recurrence of homelessness.

The post holder will need to be flexible, tenacious, creative and passionate to work with our clients to sustain and source accommodation. The post holder will have the following skills and attributes and be expected to (not exhaustive):

• Provide advice to households on their housing options and support them to pursue those options proactively.
• Provide robust and empathetic mediation between family and friends to reduce the number of parental/family evictions and eviction from friend accommodation
• To assist and support those in temporary accommodation to pursue housing options in the private rented sector by utilising the landlord incentive scheme and support package offer, negotiating with landlords to agree a bespoke package that will resolve homelessness for the family.
• To work with and support B&B proprietors who provide emergency homeless accommodation to ensure successful placements are sustained.
• Support clients to complete required paperwork associated with court appearances and hearings.
• To maximise client income by working with them to create a budgeting form, signposting them for debt advice where and helping them to maximise their income through completing claims for welfare benefits and identifying benefits that are unclaimed to support the income maximisation of the household.

This is a full time role at 37 hours per week.
This role is fixed term for 12 months.
This post requires significant travel. You must have a vehicle (or transport we deem suitable) available for use as needed.
This post involves working with children and/or vulnerable adults and/or having access to significant information about them. It will be subject to a Disclosure and Barring Service check. See our policy on the employment of ex-offenders.
See our adult safeguarding policy

Please refer the Job description for details