Homeless Prevention Outreach Worker

Job Description

The Homeless Prevention Outreach Caseworker is a specialist statutory housing role responsible for preventing and relieving homelessness in accordance with Part VII of the Housing Act 1996, as amended by the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017. The postholder will manage a complex caseload of households who are homeless or threatened with homelessness, including individuals sleeping rough and those facing multiple barriers to securing or maintaining accommodation.

The role requires the assessment and investigation of housing circumstances, gathering and evaluating evidence, determining statutory duties, and developing personalised housing plans to achieve sustainable housing outcomes. A significant aspect of the role involves producing clear, comprehensive and legally robust written decisions, notifications and correspondence that demonstrate compliance with homelessness legislation, statutory guidance and council policy.

The postholder will participate in a duty rota, undertaking assessments and investigations relating to households presenting as homeless or threatened with homelessness, including applications made under homelessness legislation. This includes making timely decisions, identifying interim and emergency accommodation duties where required, and ensuring the Council's statutory obligations are met.

Working both independently and collaboratively with partner agencies, landlords, accommodation providers and support services, the postholder will identify solutions to prevent homelessness, relieve homelessness where prevention is not possible, and support households to access and sustain suitable accommodation.

The role combines outreach engagement, housing advice, statutory casework and legal decision-making. The postholder must exercise sound professional judgement, maintain accurate records, meet statutory timescales and ensure the Council's legal duties are discharged effectively while delivering a high-quality, person-centred service to vulnerable households.

The role will be primarily based within West Cornwall to support current service demand and workforce distribution. However, the geographical focus of the role may be reviewed and amended in line with future service requirements and business needs.

Working Pattern:

This is a full-time role, working 37 hours per week, Monday to Friday 9am-5pm

What you’ll need to succeed:

Key Accountabilities

• Manage a caseload of clients who are homeless or threatened with homelessness, ensuring statutory duties are fulfilled in accordance with homelessness legislation, statutory guidance, council policy and service standards.
• Conduct detailed assessments and investigations to establish eligibility, homelessness, priority need, local connection, intentional homelessness and any statutory duties owed.
• Gather, verify and evaluate information from applicants, landlords, support agencies, health professionals and other stakeholders to inform decision-making and ensure robust case management.
• Prepare clear, accurate and legally compliant decision letters, notifications, reviews, correspondence and case records that demonstrate compliance with legislative requirements and withstand scrutiny, challenge and audit.
• Develop, implement and review Personalised Housing Plans, identifying practical actions and housing solutions to prevent or relieve homelessness and achieve sustainable outcomes.
• Participate in the service duty rota, undertaking homelessness assessments, responding to households presenting as homeless or threatened with homelessness, and taking appropriate action to meet the Council's statutory obligations, including the provision of interim or emergency accommodation where required.
• Undertake outreach activity to identify, engage and assess individuals and households experiencing homelessness, rough sleeping or housing crisis, facilitating access to accommodation, statutory assistance and support services.
• Work proactively with landlords, accommodation providers, support services, health partners, criminal justice agencies, community organisations and other stakeholders to secure housing solutions and improve outcomes for customers.
• Negotiate with landlords, family members, accommodation providers and other relevant parties to relieve homelessness, resolve housing crises and sustain accommodation wherever possible.
• Identify safeguarding concerns and take appropriate action to protect children, young people and adults at risk, working in partnership with relevant agencies.
• Maintain accurate, comprehensive and contemporaneous case records, ensuring compliance with legislative requirements, information governance standards and service procedures.
• Monitor and manage case progression to ensure statutory timescales, service standards and performance targets are consistently achieved.
• Exercise professional judgement in complex and sensitive cases, balancing legislative requirements, risk, customer need and available housing options to reach sound and defensible decisions.
• Contribute to service development, quality assurance activities, audits, complaints investigations, reviews and legal challenges, ensuring continuous improvement and the delivery of a high-quality homelessness service.

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 - Homeless Prevention Outreach Worker Role Profile

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 Ben Hawke - ben.hawke@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.

About us

Cornwall Council deliver services to more than half a million local people and over five million visitors a year. Working here - Cornwall Council

We are happy to talk about flexible working options such as part-time or compressed hours. More examples of our flexible working opportunities can be found here - flexible working options.

Fairness and inclusion are at the heart of our vision for Cornwall. In order to best serve our communities, we are striving to achieve a diverse workforce that is inclusive of all backgrounds, cultures and identities; e.g., race, disability, sex, gender reassignment status, age, religion and sexual orientation. We are an equal opportunities and Disability Confident employer, and we will assess applicants on their merits.

Cornwall Council is committed to safeguarding and following safer recruitment principles to help make sure our staff and volunteers are suitable to work with children, young people and adults at risk. It’s a vital part of creating a safe and positive environment and making a commitment to keeping all service users safe from harm.