Support Worker

Community Support & Outreach work

JOBS INCLUDED: A wide range of job titles including:

 

Job Role

The role of these workers is to help people overcome difficulties, cope with many aspects of everyday living, develop socially and personally and live as independently as possible.

 Enabling

Their work is predominantly support and enabling, rather than predominantly personal care, and involves providing advice and guidance as part of a range of support activities rather than a specialist  service

 Teams

They work in teams with other professionals, including managers, social workers, other outreach and community support workers, drug action groups, youth offending services, and with the police, education authority and schools, health authorities, housing departments etc.

Guidance 

They provide support and guidance in various ways, including individual support and counselling via such activities as shopping with service users taking them to appointments, teaching Braille or how to use a long cane to get about, developing everyday skills such as how to make a cup of tea or prepare and cook a meal safely, or simply being with them in their home environment.

 

Other ways of providing support and guidance include organising activities such as sports, drama and educational activities; Group discussions; compiling and disseminating information.

These workers usually have a number of service users that they get to know very well. Some work in residential homes with long or short-term care residents, others provide support within the local community for service users who are in supported housing or living independently.

 

They can specialise in:

 Mental Health:

Supporting people with long-term mental health problems, helping them adapt to ordinary life within the community by developing coping skills rather than being institutionalised in a hospital or hostel. They may work within the service user's home, outside in the local area, on the wards of the local hospital, and in community or day centres.

Young people:

Working in youth clubs, drop-in centres, residential homes and elsewhere, helping young people at risk through drug and alcohol abuse, offending behaviour and the whole business of growing up.

Substance misuse:

Providing a specialist service to children, young people and their families who present a range of agencies with substance misuse problems.

Families:

Visiting homes where parents are struggling to cope and where children are in danger from their own behaviour or that of others.

 

 

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