<p>JOB DESCRIPTION</p><p>Title: Helpline Advocate</p><p>Responsible to: Helpline Service Manager</p><p>Location: Cambridge</p><p>Helpline Advocate Role Purpose:</p><p>To play a key part in the provision of a new helpline service, delivering the highest standard of customer service for all clients, identifying clients’ needs, providing information and guidance, and taking, and appropriately making, referrals. </p><p>To provide a service that is accessible and responsive, maintains the accurate representation of views and interests of clients, upholds their legal and human rights, and is delivered in line and as appropriate with both the Independent NHS Complaints Advocacy Service Core Advocate Code of Conduct and VoiceAbility policies and procedures.</p><p>Role Summary:</p><p>This level is concerned with the direct provision of technical expertise to strengthen voice, champion rights and change lives of people who may be vulnerable. Jobholders would normally report to the Service Manager and would be responsible for providing a direct service to gain positive outcomes for people along with wider impacts. Jobholders would normally have gained a recognised qualification for their technical discipline. </p><p>Jobs at this level will:</p><p> Work flexibly and creatively to deliver a strong outcomes, customer focused service that achieves a high level of positive impact for those who use the service</p><p> Positively influence and build strong relationships with a range of stakeholders to ensure that impact is achieved for individuals/groups of people we work with both locally and nationally </p><p> Require expert knowledge and understanding of their subject area</p><p> Introduce innovative solutions to problems both internal and external to VoiceAbility</p><p> Provide technical and professional information to a range of stakeholders</p><p> Be responsible for a range of issues/activities requiring investigation to resolve</p><p>Job Description – Helpline Advocate – March 2013  Contribute to technical planning and have an understanding of the implications of predicted developments within the business discipline</p><p> Provide feedback to the Service Manager (including sharing success stories and suggestions for improvement) to help shape future business strategy and give credibility/strength to VoiceAbility’s capability to influence</p><p>Accountabilities: </p><p>1. Information and referrals: To be the first point of contact for all enquiries and referrals to the service, being responsible for answering inbound calls, emails, post and text messages to the helpline. Assessing clients’ support needs and providing appropriate information, advocacy support, referrals to local advocacy teams and signposting to services, ensuring all actions are followed up. Promoting self-advocacy through providing self-help information. </p><p>2. Telephone Advocacy : To deliver efficient and effective person-centred telephone advocacy, ensuring a consistently high standard is maintained and delivered in an empowering framework. To take initiative, be able to empathise and understand the problems that clients encounter when they ring the helpline. To provide telephone advocacy for people with additional support and/or communication needs, enabling clients to understand information, their rights, processes and their options. To support clients in formulating and articulating their issue, and/or writing a letter or understanding its response.</p><p>3. Maintain appropriate records/paperwork ensuring that written records are up to date and that they clearly and accurately reflect the views of users of the helpline telephone advocacy service and the activities undertaken on their behalf.</p><p>4. Practice support and compliance: To ensure all of your helpline advocacy work is compliant with internal and external standards and best practice guidance; ensuring all our policies and procedures, and especially those relating to safeguarding, are understood and practiced effectively; ensuring a culture of reflective but outcome-focused practice. To be actively involved in specialist peer forums to identify and share best practice, and to contribute fully to team meetings. To ensure continuing personal awareness of, and compliance with, the relevant codes of practice for the nature of advocacy provided. </p><p>5. Equality and Diversity: To ensure that your practice is at all times in line with our values, our policies and our procedures. To contribute to the development and review of a Helpline Equal Voices Plan.</p><p>6. Data management: To accurately record client activity and outcomes on the MAAVIS database, and on other systems as appropriate, and that you analyse and report on that data regularly with team members (and others) to drive up performance standards, volume of activity and outcomes achieved.</p><p>Job Description – Helpline Advocate – March 2013 7. Relationship management/PR : To ensure strong relationship management of key stakeholders, existing and new. To build effective relationships with VoiceAbility locality teams, NHS partners, health & social care and information providing organisations and, along with other helpline team members, maintain an effective profile of the helpline service.</p><p>8. Information management: Working with VoiceAbility teams in different localities, gather accurate and up-to-date information about health, social care & voluntary sector organisations in the localities. Maintaining a knowledge and information library that is accessible to helpline and local staff, so as to support clients more effectively. To liaise with the marketing & communications directorate to ensure key information from the localities is kept up-to-date on the website and is accessible for stakeholders.</p><p>9. Be mindful of the budget set for the provision of the helpline service and operate within the culture of cost awareness/cost control, helping to contribute towards and implement efficiencies where appropriate.</p><p>10.Implementing opportunities for innovation, which lead to improved service and performance of VoiceAbility’s objectives. Share learning with colleagues across the organisation (be an internal champion). Consistently gaining client feedback and, where instructed, to help coordinate and undertake surveys to understand user opinion of the helpline service. </p><p>11.Living and breathing VoiceAbility’s values through your own behaviour and by inspiring/guiding others in the way we work.</p><p>12.Taking responsibility for your own personal and professional development. This includes keeping abreast of policy briefings circulated internally as well as developments within the local authority areas in which we work. Developing and maintaining an area of specialist knowledge for the helpline team eg: the mental capacity act, the equality agenda, children and young people, safeguarding, working with people in secure environments, the NHS. </p><p>13.Any other responsibilities requested of you by your service manager.</p><p>14.This role will require some travel, occasionally, within England</p><p>All Job Descriptions and Accountabilities shall be subject to periodic review.</p><p>Job Description – Helpline Advocate – March 2013</p>