Financial Inclusion Officer

Financial Inclusion Officer

About us at Hounslow

We'd love you to join us at the London Borough of Hounslow! Our people are deeply committed to providing excellent services to our residents, doing all we can to make lives as good as they can be.

We are an outstanding council, serving an outstanding borough. With brilliant, visionary leadership, a dynamic Cabinet and a can-do culture, we've built strong partnerships which have transformed how we serve one of London's most diverse boroughs. Hounslow is the world in one place and full of potential. We are stepping up for our residents like never before.

About our Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion

We live by five core values: Lead with Heart, Do New, Pass on the Power, Harness the Mix and Be a Rock. All our work has equality, diversity and inclusion at its very heart, best articulated in "Harness the Mix". It's about breaking down barriers between our parts and people and unlocking the problem-solving power of our amazing mix of minds. We serve a diverse community, we have a diverse workforce and we are committed to being an inclusive employer.

We work hard to create representation across our workforce and leadership community, we have thriving employee network groups and our learning and development programmes help us lead, model and breathe ways of working that eliminate inequality, inequity, injustice and bias.

As part of this and under our commitments as a Disability Confident Employer, we make reasonable adjustments to accommodate our candidates. There's space for you to tell us what you need within our application form.

About The Role

This is an exciting opportunity to be part of our Housing Income Team as a Financial Inclusion Officer. Your role is to assist individuals and staff on welfare rights and debt issues by way of advice, information and representation which maximise income for residents.

The role is responsible for holding advice sessions at specified outreach sites in the Borough, alongside training and development for our Housing colleagues ensuring knowledge remains high within relevant departments. It is also responsible for promoting public awareness of debt and benefits issues and to monitor changes to legislation which affects claimants and people in debt.

About The Team You'll Be Working In

• Proactively identify, contact, visit and work with residents at risk of reduced income as a result of changes to the welfare benefit system.
• You will work with Allocations to help assess new tenants' ability to afford the housing costs to ensure that all new tenancies are financially sustainable.
• Work with incoming tenants to ensure welfare benefit and other potential income sources are maximised.
• Forge meaningful relationships with external agencies and refer residents to these agencies for additional support.
• Work closely with colleagues to achieve team targets on rent arrears, sustaining tenancies and maximising the organisations income stream.

About You

If the points below resonate with you, we'd love you to put in an application:

• Experience of advising customers about welfare rights, debt advice and financial capability and the ability to represent customers at court.
• Knowledge of money advice techniques including debt prioritisation and enforcement methods including a detailed knowledge of the resolutions available to a range of debts.
• Excellent understanding of the principles and current best practice in financial capability and financial inclusion. Basic DBS check is required for the role.

Closing date: 10 March 2025.