Equal Care Facilitator role description

Equal Care Facilitator

Summary

Your role is to find, support, represent and introduce people and their families to Equal Care Co-op’s introductory service and to get their support and care relationship with their new care workers off to the best start. You’ll also be the point person to go to for solving difficulties.

You are ‘carrying’ the caring relationships which exist between people being supported, their involved family members and the paid workers supporting them.

This role is part of a pilot - some of the activities described below are dependent on the development of Equal Care’s digital offering and will come into play over the course of next year.

Note there is no official deadline for applications. However, we are holding rolling interviews and will recruit as soon as we find someone(s) brilliant, so apply soon if you want to go for it! We will fill up interview date slots on a first come first served basis so the sooner your application goes in the more likely it is that we'll be able to interview on the first date.

The first interview day is 5th December 2019 at our office in Halifax and the second is in the afternoon on the 10th December 2019. We'll either make a decision following these days or publish more dates on this page. Where people have immovable commitments on those days we'll find a mutual time.

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The basics

Salary	£25,000 - £28,000 dependent on experience and qualifications
Full-time or part-time?	Either. Your choice.
Flexible working okay?	Yes, of course, though be mindful that some people may need to meet you outside normal working hours.
Job share allowed?	Yes , that too
Can I combine it with other roles in Equal Care Co-op?	Yes, absolutely
Where is it?	The role geography matches the Calder Valley Social Work team area (i.e. including Sowerby Bridge) but for the first year will be in Hebden Bridge, Todmorden, Blackshaw Head and office time in Halifax. Your place of work will be University Business Centre, 27 Horton St, Halifax HX1 1QE.
Do I need a car?	No, but it would really help with getting to people for your one to ones and one to twos. If you can drive but don't have a car we'll sign you up to the local eco friendly car club. We also welcome avid cyclists!
Key Circle (i.e. main team)	People
Link Person (i.e. main person to support you)	Kate Hammon (for first year)
Your Links	Independent care and support workers who you train to be Equal Care Facilitators (ad-hoc) + team members on a rotating annual basis
Circle Roles	You may be nominated into these as part of your work.
Disabilities and differences welcome?	More than welcome - actively welcome. Please apply! We're disability confident and a mindful employer and we're committed to doing our bit to erode the disability employment gap.
Disclosure and Barring Service check?	Yes. We will need an Enhanced Check as part of a conditional offer for this job. We follow the Code of Conduct for these.

What you'll be doing

We like and support dynamic and emerging work roles. Each section below should be treated as a mini-role in its own right and the share of time you spend on each will change. Significant changes are agreed as part of the consent process with your circle and you lead on your role review at least biennially. You will act upon the role, helping to sculpt it and shape the experiences of facilitators who will follow in your footsteps.

Help people navigate the care system

The care system is slow, disconnected and difficult to understand. You can help take out some of the pain in dealing with it.

Advocacy, sending letters on behalf of people struggling with the assessment process
Social care assessment support
Be a shoulder to cry on when it all gets too frustrating
Being the advocate for the relationships you’re carrying both internally and externally

Know the people in charge of the care system in your area

Good working relationships with the people in charge can’t hurt - you’ll be doing your bit to make the system work in the interest of the people it’s intended to serve.

Connect with GPs, Social Workers, hospital staff and others likely to refer into us or be in charge of people’s care packages
Work with your colleagues to set up new contracts that genuinely work in the best interests of those giving and those receiving support

Help people join Equal Care Co-op

Digital services are not everybody’s cup of tea. We want people to be able to join and interact with Equal Care through any way they are most comfortable with - over the phone, face-to-face, through the post.

Introduce people to Equal Care, tell people about the service and how to get started
Have conversations with people coming on to the platform, looking at the website (telephone & chat), walking people through the application process over the phone, posting tailored information out to them
Have one to ones with people who want to know how it works

Be a match-maker (!)

The care and support relationship is fundamental. A good one can lengthen people's lives, avoid stress and burnout, preserve and protect the wellbeing of both people involved and lead to much better health outcomes. For those relationships to flourish they need grounded, committed support from others to get things off to a great start.

Have those first, crucial conversations with people and their families looking for support
Carry out facilitated matches where people want these (i.e. you go along for each new introduction)
Write the support plan and summary profile for care workers to view and volunteers as appropriate
Ensure that the relevant contracts and consent are signed and that people are clear about expectations of one another
Get to know the independent care and support workers and community volunteers in your area
Ensure that someone is nominated to lead on co-ordinating the support in the person’s team (could be a family member, the person themselves, a care and support worker)
Help people use the app or use paper booklet to help them choose
Help people select, book and pay for trial support sessions

Support, training & recruitment

The work of equal care facilitators also crosses over into a freelance, ad-hoc role as needed.

Train independent workers in carrying out initial visits
Recruit independent workers (who have already gone through the full recruitment process for Equal Care) to carry out this role on an independent basis, carrying fewer relationships
Support or cover for any independent workers in their matching and facilitation roles
Participate in recruitment processes for independent workers joining Equal Care Co-op (review applications, sit on interview panel)

People-based problem-solving

Relationships are complex and can get into difficulties. The caring relationship needs support from others to thrive.

You are the go-to person for new and established caring relationships that run into issues: this is for both the person getting the support and their family and the care worker.
Problem-solving could involve all sorts of activities: helping to find back-up at short notice (must be requested by the person needing support, not the care worker due to CQC requirements), facilitating and resolving a disagreement, helping a care worker raise a Safeguarding concern or identifying and raising a concern yourself.
Making sure that problems help to change future practice, sharing them with the rest of the team and helping people learn from them.

Tell people about Equal Care

We don't do traditional advertising to let people know about us, but we need people to find out about us somehow and we want to do it in a way that involves as few 'faces' as possible before people get direct support.

Give talks and Q&A sessions at extra care, sheltered accommodation, health centre and other local groups (with Circle Community Organiser as needed)
Take part in events and some Community Support Circle meetings
Post on Equal Care’s twitter and facebook pages
Contribute to newsletters

Offer support

Emotional labour is often unrecognised and is often the most exhausting part of a job. Your emotional and compassionate engagement is an active part of the role and so we’re including it in the job description. Emotional processing is work.

Provide emotional support to your colleagues and to circle members, with especial focus on those people not being paid for their contribution to the circle
Do your best to recognise and say when you need support yourself, understanding that this will fluctuate according to circumstances both in your personal and professional life
Act pragmatically on these rhythms, leaning on and sharing out work with colleagues at times when you need to step back and take a break from the deep, human engagement needed for this role
In order to keep a direct connection with the core work of Equal Care Co-op, at least 5% of your working hours will be giving support to someone getting social care (note this is not charged to people and is part of the co-operative’s voluntary offering)

Contribute to the design of Equal Care’s digital service

We're building technology that fits our purpose, our ethos and our goals. We can't do this without you.

Test out new versions built by our developers and contribute new / improvement ideas
Feedback difficulties you and other people encounter
Participate in design and user testing days

And finally, co-create your own role

This role is part of a pilot - we expect it to change! We need you to help shape it.

The equal care facilitator role is a crucial anchor role connecting people to the platform, the co-operative and each other. We don't know yet which of your activities will be the one most crucial to the success of people's ongoing care and support relationships and to the co-operative as a whole.
We expect a lot of the tools and processes you use and participate in your day-to-day work will change and evolve. We need your active participation in shaping these.

What you're like

You are a calm, communicative, kind person. People feel safe around you and you inspire trust in others. You are relationship-focussed and able to empathize with several perspectives (family members, caregivers, people getting support). Your writing style prioritises representing people in their own voices and does not ‘translate’ people’s words into medicalised or overly formal language. People can recognise themselves and feel heard and seen by your writing.

You are self-directed, adaptable and focussed on solutions. You’re fine with ambiguity and if you seek clarity and don’t find it you work to create it. You are imaginative and good at seeing many possible outcomes. You see people in terms of their potential and their strengths.

(Don’t be discouraged if you don’t immediately recognise yourself in the description above. It is our experience that many people in caring roles are not so brilliant at seeing their own merits. If you struggle with this, get family and friends to read the paragraph above and they’ll see qualities you may have missed).

Your experience & qualifications

If you’ve had about 70% of these experiences that’s great, the rest can be learned (and we'll provide whichever training is the right fit for you). We haven't divided things into essential v desirable but if you can see only a few things on this list that apply to you this may not be the right role for you right now.

Experience

Facilitating small groups
One to one or one to two sessions where you are taking a supportive or leadership role
Resolving conflict and concerns between individuals
Teaching or coaching people one to one, especially about topics with a relational focus (like facilitation or caring)
Writing care and support notes, plans and risk assessments
Doing direct care and support work
Using / evaluating digital products (e.g. a care planning app, customer relationship management software)
Support brokerage, link or social work or a similar role involving connecting people with one another

Qualifications (together with significant experience of the above) likely to attract the higher rate of pay are:

Social Work, Nursing, Level 4/5 Diploma in Health and Social Care area, degree in related subject

A 'typical' week...

A presentation to a local sheltered housing organisation results in immediate interest in Equal Care Co-op from two people and ‘watching and waiting’ interest from others. You have a one to one with each of the two, introducing them to the platform and service.

You get routed several expressions of interest from the website, coming from people who want to know more and get a call from you before signing up. You make five calls in the day, explain more about the service and listen to people. One person is able to register online with you on the phone to them. You make three follow-up face to face appointments with people who don’t want to go online and want to speak directly to you first about their support.

One person signs up for a trial support session during the face to face appointment and the other two need you to help out with their social care budgets. You write a couple of letters to their social workers as part of your visit, which helps move their Local Authority care assessment along.

Some days you are in the office. Other days, you’re out and about.

Your phone rings a few times a day with new enquiries. You talk to people about the service. Some are okay with then moving on to sign up independently but most want a face to face chat, where you go out and either do a more detailed introduction of Equal Care for them to mull over or go straight ahead with finding someone suitable to support them. You book a meeting with an independent care worker who’s interested in beginning to facilitate matches on an ad-hoc basis.

You get a call from someone who hasn’t been invoiced as they expected - you take it up with the person responsible for this and move it along. You get a call from a care worker you matched a couple of months ago - she’s frustrated, doesn’t want to stop supporting the person but is having issues with a family member. You call the family member to talk about this and ask them what you can do to help. The family member agrees to a facilitated meeting with you and the care worker and you use your problem-solving and listening skills to help bring things to an outcome everyone can agree to.