Mentor

Job Description

Mentor – Part-time

Rota:

Vacancy 1 Shift Pattern – Sunday 9am-10pm, Monday 8.30am-9.30pm and Friday 3pm-10pm

Vacancy 2 Shift Pattern – Saturday 9am-10pm, Tuesday 3pm–10pm, Wednesday 3pm-10pm, Thursday 3pm-10pm

The shift patterns above do not include any sleep-in shifts.

OUR PURPOSE AND MISSION STATEMENT

My Future Matters Ltd is a trauma informed specialist provider for children and young people, and have enjoyed creating our first bespoke trauma informed home that provides care for all gender identities between the ages of 9 years to 17 years of age.

The home is a 3 bed home for young people with complex trauma that may require a smaller home and increased care to help their trauma recovery, using therapeutic partners and training developers within bespoke trauma informed care.

We are excited to grow the My Future Matters Ltd family and we are looking to recruit enthusiastic trauma informed Mentors for our Residential Children’s Home in Horam, East Sussex. This will involve supporting and caring for young people to provide a safe and nurturing home via therapeutic care; ensuring they develop and achieve in all areas of their life, for example education, health, hobbies and relationships whilst keeping them safe in a bespoke, tailored home environment.

Sacred Place is a thoughtful, well designed therapeutic home in a rural setting, offering 4 acres of outdoor space and therapeutic spaces for example a snug, sensory space, games room and a music and arts room for creative and therapeutic expression and experiences.

We are looking for professionals with level 3-5 qualifications in Childhood studies or equivalent and be open to undergo extensive training in trauma and attachment informed approach. We also welcome people with life and work experience for this role, as we value direct experience just as much as qualifications.

We are committed to investing in our staff for the long term, so we offer a good salary rate and great growth and development opportunities, as we want our staff to be happy where they work. We believe that consistency is key for our trauma informed homes so this will be a long term opportunity.

We are looking for two part-time positions, so following a successful 6-month probation period, we will offer permanent positions within the My Future Matters Ltd.

– Must have at least 1 year’s experience working with children; understanding safeguarding issues and the importance of keeping young people safe

– Must be qualified in Children’s Residential or Therapeutic Childcare (or equivalent)

– Driving preferred for engagement with the young people and taking them to activities due to the rural location of the home.

– Must undergo a DBS

– Must provide at least 2 references

Responsibilities:

• Be a positive role model, trusted and consistent mentor for young people
• Undertake keywork sessions to support young people’s development with independent living skills for example in, cooking, cleaning, budgeting, job and college applications and transitioning into adulthood and services to be successful happy adults
• To follow company policies and procedures to keep young people safe, to have equal opportunities and enable them to achieve and be safe
• To undertake regular training and supervision to create joint development plans to be an effective mentor and achieve your career development goals
• To use a trauma and attachment informed approach to develop key trusted relationships with young people, their professionals and family/carer team, to support them achieving their pathway plans, care plans and future goals
• To support young people with their emotional development using trauma informed approaches and interventions to enable them to regulate, relate and recover from their past trauma to enable them to develop in life
• To maintain the home by cleaning, cooking, carrying out Health & Safety duties; giving structure and routine to provide a therapeutic home that meets the young people’s needs, keeps them safe and creates memories and relationships that are meaningful and impactful for their childhood experience and development.

Safeguarding Responsibilities:

• be aware of this policy and all other safeguarding policies and procedures during induction, training and personal development;
• discuss any actual or emerging safeguarding concerns in supervision
• know who the safeguarding leads are and how to report concerns;
• be trained in identifying signs of harm and abuse;
• respond immediately to any young person to keep them safe;
• know what to do if a young person makes a disclosure;
• receive support and counselling if feeling distressed from being involved with a case or incident;
• stay up to date with changes in procedures;
• be prepared to attend a Strategy Meeting;
• be prepared to attend a Child Protection Case Conference
• keep accurate, objective records of any concerns or incidents
• complete body maps and ensure relevant people are notified so a conclusion is reached

The company’s mission is to improve the outcomes for young people by using a trauma informed approach and principles to enable the young people to develop, feel safe and reach their futures goals. We are committed to investing in young people so they can have the right tools practically and internally, so they are able to repair from their past traumas, feel safe, able to regulate their emotions so they can learn, develop to achieve their full potential.

We are on a mission to give young people the best possible support and space to reduce the current sad statistic of higher risk in this group in their adult life, of experiencing homelessness, having difficulties with substance misuse and mental health difficulties, being exploited and becoming involved in the criminal justice systems (Mental Health Foundation, 2020). We believe young people’s lives matter, and we want to be able to provide the right bespoke support to enable them to be happy, safe and become happy and be part of their exciting transitional journey’s towards adulthood.

Core Values

Feel Safe – It is essential for a young person to be in their window of tolerance to be able to repair from their past trauma to enable them to develop and achieve. Therefore, we have invested time in creating a 24/7 supported safe welcoming, nurturing spaces within our homes to aid in young people feeling a sense of ‘home’, belonging to promote a place of safety.

Young person led – The voice of the young person in paramount and is clear throughout our service this has taken president, as we work with the young people to achieve their own set goals. We ensure young people are involved in all aspects of decision’s in their life, plans and empower young people to attend meetings, to ensure their voice is heard.

Be Empowered and feel Valued – A core approach in our style of working is empowering the young people we work with to make crucial steps and decisions in their life. Through this we hope to enable them to gain a better sense of self, improved self-esteem and feel valued, as their lives and future matters and they can achieve great outcomes.

Access to Opportunities – We strive for all young people to achieve equal opportunities, that is why we have good local networks with careers advisors, business’s and educational training provisions to help young people to achieve. A key aim is for the young people we work with to be in some form of education, training or employment and to maximise their current skills. We soon will be able to offer in house AQA assessment to achieve certificates to add to their CV’s to improve possible opportunities to access future goals.

Achieve Independence – Our service’s core values are to act anti oppressive and we believe in working with the young people, and not taking opportunities away from them in making decisions or undertaking tasks that can hinder their independence growth, as experiencing and creating opportunities to learn and develop will support their independence journey. We are here to offer support/care and guidance and can adapt to diverse learning styles to help them to achieve the skills to give them the best opportunity to live independently in adulthood.

Working together – ‘We are in this journey together!’ Children and young people that are being supported by the local authority, as well as these young people after 18 years of age are at an increased risk of experiencing loneliness (Community Care, 2019). Therefore, we are there to support the young person through their time with us, to not feel alone, create community networks and are able to offer additional transitional support to reduce this risk when leaving our homes.

Be Happy and Enjoy life – This can be an exciting time in an adolescence journey to adulthood, along with some anxieties. We believe in creating safe, happy environments, a place you want to come home to, and able to relax and have a ‘laugh’, as they say, ‘laughter is food for the soul’. Research suggests that due to the natural endorphins that laugher produces it can improve your emotional well-being (Yim, 2016), so could be argued in some respects or beliefs this is somewhat true, so we hope to create a little space in time of happy memories.

Job Type: Part-time, permanent positions

Salary: £21,000 – £22,500

Benefits:

• Casual dress
• Company pension
• Gym membership
• Sick pay
• Wellness programme

Work Location: In person

Job Type: Part-time

Pay: £21,000.00-£22,500.00 per year

Benefits:

• Casual dress
• Company pension
• Gym membership
• Health & wellbeing programme
• On-site parking
• Sick pay

Work Location: In person