Team Leader

Job title: Team Leader (Older Person’s Service)

Are you passionate about helping people to live a better life? Do you want to work for a charity where your health and wellbeing matter just as much as the people you support? Do you want to be part of a trauma-informed team where you will be supported to develop creative and flexible ways of working?

At LinkLiving, our values and people are at the heart of everything we do including how we recruit our staff. It is important for us to find people who share our values, which are:

• Empathy (listen to and understand an individual’s needs and circumstances)
• Respect (treat others the way they wish to be treated)
• Integrity (be honest and have strong moral principles)
• Caring (show kindness and concern for others)

LinkLiving is a Scottish health and wellbeing charity that supports people to manage or overcome the effects of negative life experiences (including trauma, mental health challenges, poverty and inequality) so that they can build on their strengths and aspirations in order to live their best possible lives. We support people through a range of models including:

• Personal development and employability programmes 
• Self-help coaching
• Supported accommodation
• Care at home
• Housing support
• Befriending
• Social cafes

The Service

Our Older Persons Service supports people in Fife aged 65+ to reconnect with their community and live full and active lives. It provides the necessary support for people to remain in their own homes longer.

There is a high rate of loneliness in Fife, particularly amongst older people. The Older Persons’ Service provide much-needed companionship and support to help older people of Fife to become more involved in their local communities.

The Older Persons Service has three distinctive projects:

• Volunteer befriending

The Older Persons' Service recruits, supports and trains people as volunteer befrienders. By enabling older people to be connected, rather than cut-off, the volunteers help to improve their quality of life, and this can delay or avoid the need for more intensive support. The Service matches trained volunteers with vulnerable older people to provide person-centered befriending support in people’s homes and in their communities.

• Social cafes

Weekly social cafes help older people aged 65+ who have become isolated, lonely, or who are affected by poor health, to meet others and become more involved in their local communities. The cafes not only offer older people an opportunity to socialise with others but also can provide valuable respite to carers who are in most cases family members. Volunteers organise a range of activities and trips for the cafe members, from music to quizzes, to board games, to trips chosen by the members.

• Help to Stay at Home

Help to Stay at Home is a befriending service provided by experienced assistant project workers. The service supports people over 65 to access services in the local community. The service aims to support those who are house bound or have long-term health conditions to become more active and to re-engage with their local communities. The service can also offer support to carers by providing respite allowing them to continue in their role as long as possible.

The Job

The purpose of the job is to provide leadership, support and supervision to a team of project workers to deliver a high-quality service for older people within the Fife area whilst ensuring that funding is monitored, the service to individuals is co-ordinated and that appropriate policies and local procedures are in place. The Team Leader is the first line manager and is responsible for ensuring the service is of high quality. The Team Leader will combine a thorough knowledge of social care practice and processes with first class leadership, staff support and development skills.

Working closely with the Service Manager, the Team Leader will use their extensive knowledge and experience of Older Persons services to develop and expand services across Fife.

About You

You will have a good general standard of education combined with a Supervisory or management qualification or willingness to work towards this. You will also need experience of leading a team and carrying out support and supervision, plus experience of managing budgets and completing monitoring reports for funders.

The successful candidate will have knowledge of issues affecting the people who are excluded and marginalized, extensive knowledge of diversity of this service user group, combined with an understanding of the issues affecting service users, a commitment to people and ability to develop and sustain relationships and a sense of judgement plus the ability to take decisions and be responsible for them.

You will have a sensitivity and responsiveness to people’s emotional and social health combined with a willingness to embrace diversity and challenge opinions that are exclusive.

We expect that a Team leader has a proactive approach to your own learning and ability to keep up to date with practice issues/policy/legislation, have self-reflection as a regular part of practice ensuring that expertise is maintained and be able to actively and naturally seek feedback about performance from others as part of a self reflective process.

A flexible, practical and reliable approach, the ability to work flexible hours including evenings, weekends and public holiday and the ability to drive and be able to travel between services as required is also essential.

For a comprehensive list of the essential and desirable criteria required for this post, please refer to the Job Specification in the Job information Pack above.

What’s in it for you?

As a LinkLiving employee, you'll benefit from a generous annual leave entitlement; a competitive pension; life assurance and a comprehensive wellbeing package.

This post is subject to Protection of Vulnerable Groups (PVG) Scheme registration. Link will meet the cost of any new PVG scheme membership or scheme record update.

Further Information

Interested? If you have any questions about the role, please email jobs@linkhaltd.co.uk and we can arrange for someone from the service to call you for an informal chat.

To find out more about what LinkLiving do, please visit our website at https://www.linkliving.org.uk

Closing Date: midnight on Wednesday 22 June 2022

Interview Date: Interviews are being held on Thursday 30 June 2022 at our office in Kirkcaldy

How to Apply

To complete an application form, please click on the “Apply Now” button below. Instructions on how to complete the form are at the top of the page.

We can offer suitable alternative methods to apply if requested including although not exclusively, hard copy, Braille and audio. You can request these by emailing our Resourcing Team at jobs@linkhaltd.co.uk and detailing which format you would require.

Please note should an internal applicant be successful in applying for this position on either a seconded or permanent basis, they will move to the terms and conditions associated with the role for the duration of the time they are in post. The terms and conditions are outlined in the job information pack.

LinkLiving is an equal opportunities organisation, and we welcome applications from all sectors of the community. Our offices are fully accessible to wheelchair users and, as a Disability Confident employer, we will interview all disabled candidates who meet the essential criteria.